Dr. Lindsey Richardson is a Research Scientist with the BC Centre on Substance Use and an Associate Professor in the Department of Sociology at the University of British Columbia. She holds the Canada Research Chair in Social Inclusion and Health Equity. As a medical sociologist her research focuses on the dynamics and health impacts of employment, income generation, and poverty among people who use drugs. She is the Principal Investigator of several observational, intervention, and research participation studies with the overarching goal to address socioeconomic drivers of drug-related harm and health inequity. Her work has been recognized by numerous awards, most recently by the Angus Reid Award for Public Sociology from the Canadian Sociological Association.

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We asked Dr. Richardson about her recent CHIR award and her aims as she sheds light on issues surrounding substance use and the trades.

Q: Congratulations on your recent CIHR grant! Can you tell me a bit about this research project?

 Thank you! The project is called “Substance Use, Work and Well-Being in the Trades and Construction Industry” and it responds to longstanding but incomplete evidence that people that work in the industry are disproportionately impacted by drug-related harm, including unregulated drug deaths. I’ve teamed up with Chris McLeod, the Director of the Partnership for Work, Health and Safety at UBC’s School of Population and Public Health who is co-leading the project. This multi-pronged research will combine existing linked administrative data from WorkSafeBC, the Ministry of Health and other sources, with new quantitative data among union and non-union workers as well as qualitative data among people who are involved in the occupational medical monitoring system. We’re pairing this empirical research with a knowledge mobilization platform that brings together cross-sectoral interest holders to try to address some of the complex challenges in this area. For example, the tensions created by the need for workplace safety and zero-tolerance drug policies, or the challenges around physically demanding but insecure work and the need for effective pain management.

Q: How has your past research set you up for this new(er) line of inquiry?

My longstanding focus on employment and well-being among people with lived and living experience of drug use has emphasized a number of key points that guide this work. We know from my and others’ work at the BCCSU that how you make and manage money matters for well-being. We know that substance use can select people into different kinds of work and vice versa. And, more recently, findings from the Assessing Economic Transitions (ASSET) Study have reinforced that the structure of work, work environments, work culture, and the broader policy environment all contribute to occupation-specific outcomes (e.g., degree of work flexibility, the work environment, and whether public policy is adequately supportive of work) for people who use drugs. That research has really contributed to the conceptual motivation for this project. The ASSET Study has also really pointed toward the potential importance of a sector-specific focus if we’re going to leverage work as a determinant of health with significant potential to reduce occupational drivers of drug-related harm and improve well-being.

Q: What are your ultimate goals with this research, and how do you hope to improve the lives of those living with substance use challenges?

Ultimately, we hope that the scientific work associated with the project will build out an evidence-base that will inform policy, programming and different workplace and treatment protocols that reduce substance-related harms, improve employment outcomes, and sustain the trades and construction workforce. We’re seeking to advance understandings of the scope and dynamics of substance use and related harms, responses to substance use among workers, and the impacts of current policies and programming, as well as identify potential points of intervention to support prevention, treatment, recovery and return-to-work outcomes. There’s very little research in this area, and so we’re hoping to tailor the work so that it is action-oriented and legible to relevant to wide-ranging actors in the area.

Q: I understand that you have many collaborators in this area of research. Can you tell me who you are working with and where these collaborations might be headed?

There are a number of initiatives that have been undertaken to address this issue in the past. Some of them have been really effective, but the ongoing harms we’re seeing suggest that there’s a need for additional action. This is a highly complex research environment with groups across multiple arenas that may not always collaborate directly, even though they all have important and complementary roles to play. We’re hoping this research will be mobilized to support workers, employers, unions, clinicians and decision makers in mitigating occupational and substance use-related harms by addressing the direct, material, and significant impacts on the work and well-being trajectories of people with living experience of substance use in the trades and construction sector. If that’s going to happen, we need to work with wide ranging collaborators to bridge critical knowledge gaps and advance evidence-based approaches to substance use in this sector. So far that means we’re working with institutional partners like WorkSafeBC and officials in the provincial government; various industry-specific associations and unions; organized groups of people with lived and living experience; the clinical addiction medicine leads from health authorities across the province; and legal advocacy organizations; among others. We’re hoping that this kind of approach will translate into the research and its associated knowledge mobilization, supporting an intersectoral response to a critical challenge.