OVERVIEW
The Qualitative Community-Based Research Program at the BC Centre on Substance has a broad program mandate to examine the impacts of social, structural, and environmental factors on drug-related harm and to evaluate novel programs and policies specific to substance use.
Research topics range widely, including: examinations of emerging and existent harm reduction programs, including opioid maintenance, overdose prevention interventions and impacts of social-structural conditions on safer supply provision; community engagement and innovation; and how the intersections of contextual factors (e.g., COVID-19) and public policy (e.g., policing; housing) impact substance use and overdose-related patterns among diverse social groups.
Our research teams draw on a range of data collection methods, including in-depth interviews, community-based participatory research (CBPR), ethnographic observational fieldwork, and geospatial mapping.
CURRENT STUDIES
Principal Investigators: Dr. Ryan McNeil and Dr. Thomas Kerr
Funder: National Institute on Drug Abuse
This study examines the implementation and effectiveness of harm reduction and addiction treatment interventions amidst an overdose epidemic driven by fentanyl and other adulterants, including the implementation and scale-up of naloxone training and distribution, supervised consumption services, and novel addiction treatment and safe supply approaches.
Principal Investigators: Dr. William Small and Dr. Ryan McNeil
Funder: National Institute on Drug Abuse
This study examines the feasibility and implementation of biomedical and systems-level HIV prevention and treatment approaches among people who use drugs, as well as approaches to the co-management of key co-morbidities. Additionally, the study examines the impact of COVID-19-related disruptions on people who use drugs living with HIV, focusing on treatment access and adherence and organizational-level responses to the management of COVID-related risk.
Principal Investigator: Dr. Jade Boyd
Funder: Canadian Institutes of Health Research
This study examines how individual, social, structural, and environmental factors, including the COVID-19 pandemic, shape overdose risk environments of women who use drugs.
Principal Investigators: Dr. Ryan McNeil and Dr. Jade Boyd
Funder: Canadian Institutes of Health Research
This study examines overdose risk environments in low-income housing and emergency shelters in Lower Mainland region of British Columbia and the implementation of overdose-related interventions in these settings.
Principal Investigator: Dr. Thomas Kerr
Funder: Canadian Institutes of Health Research
This study examines access to and integration of addiction treatment and harm reduction programs within acute and community healthcare settings in Canada, identifying impacts of access on overdose, and on HIV and HCV risk and treatment outcomes, and evaluating novel harm reduction programming.
Principal Investigators: Dr. Jade Boyd and Dr. Andrew Ivsins
Funder: Canadian Institutes of Health Research
This study examines how engagement with safer supply-oriented programs impacts people living with HIV and their drug use practices, their overdose vulnerability, and management of HIV and other comorbid conditions. Using interviews and ethnographic observation, this project explores how socio-structural factors shape engagement with safer supply-oriented interventions and HIV treatment, treatment outcomes, and their onward impacts to health and quality of life.
Part of the CRISM Emerging Health Threat (EHT) Implementation Science Program on Opioid Interventions and Services
Principal Investigator: Dr. Jade Boyd
Funder: Canadian Institutes of Health Research
This national network is a working group of people with lived and living expertise of drug use from four regional nodes across Canada (British Columbia; the Prairies; Ontario; and the Quebec/Atlantic regions). Knowledge translation and mobilization among members provides opportunities for identifying and developing research on common priorities towards addressing Canada’s overdose crisis, while providing support across regions. See dope-policy.com.
Principal Investigators: Dr. Geoff Bardwell and Dr. Thomas Kerr
Funder: Vancouver Foundation
The study examines the social, structural, and environmental factors affecting overdose risks and other substance use-related harms in non-urban settings in British Columbia. Rural, remote, and Indigenous communities are disproportionately impacted by overdose, and this longitudinal qualitative study examines access to and experience of opioid agonist therapies in these contexts.
Principal Investigators: Dr. Mary Clare Kennedy and Dr. Thomas Kerr
Funder: Vancouver Coastal Health/Health Canada
This is a mixed-methods evaluation of the Safer Alternative for Emergency Response (SAFER) program. A partnership between PHS Community Services Society, Vancouver Coastal Health and BC Centre on Substance Use, with funding from Health Canada, SAFER provides regulated alternatives to toxic street drugs. SAFER expands on historic opioid agonist treatment protocols by piloting new medication options for people at risk of drug poisoning where other treatments have not been successful.
PARTNERS
Some key partners include:
- Vancouver Area Network of Drug Users (VANDU)
- Western Aboriginal Harm Reduction Society (WAHRS)
- British Columbia Association for People on Opioid Maintenance (BCAPOM)
- Dr. Peter AIDS Foundation
- Portland Hotel Society (PHS)
- Atira Women’s Resource Society
- LIFT Community Services
- Canadian Association of People who Use Drugs (CAPUD)
- Vancouver Coastal Health
CONTACT
For more information about the Qualitative Community-Based Research Program, contact:
Sylvia Parusel, Research Manager
Email: [email protected]