Downtown Eastside academics at the BCCSU work alongside first responders to reduce B.C. overdose deaths

published on January 29, 2019 by Travis Lupick, in The Georgia Straight

Vancouver paramedics and firefighters receive a lot of credit for the extra burden they’ve carried since fentanyl arrived in B.C. and sent overdose calls skyrocketing. The same goes for social-service providers and staff at supervised-injection sites. To be sure, they all deserve praise. But there’s another group working to prevent deaths—one that’s a step removed from the frontlines—that receives less attention.

In a supportive role are research organizations that inform on-the-ground efforts and help government officials improve services for overdose prevention and response.
They include the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, the B.C. Centre for Disease Control, universities (including UBC and SFU), and, located in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside—the epicentre of the crisis—there is the B.C. Centre on Substance Use (BCCSU).

Ryan McNeil is a research scientist and team leader with the BCCSU. He told the Georgia Straight they’ve worked with a half-dozen of Vancouver’s new overdose-prevention sites since the provincial government began funding them in late 2016.

“We can feed findings and recommendations back to the groups operating these services and also to the people making decisions about them,” McNeil said in a telephone interview. “In practice, this has meant our on-the-ground social-science work has an impact in informing the overdose response.

He provided an example: since December 2016, the BCCSU has followed about 70 people who regularly use an injection site in the Downtown Eastside. After a few months, a common sentiment emerged from some of this group’s female members. They didn’t always feel comfortable accessing harm-reduction services in locations where male clients were present, McNeil recounted. In response, the BCCSU entered into discussions with the nonprofit Atira Woman’s Resource Society, which had just begun operating a small women-only injection site. The BCCSU shared its data with Atira leadership, who then drew on that data to inform best practices at what became Sister Space: North America’s first and only women-only supervised-injection facility.

View the full article >>

Tags:

Treatment as Prevention®

BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS

Search form

Downtown Eastside academics at the BCCSU work alongside first responders to reduce B.C. overdose deaths

Search form