Page 10 of 27
In recent decades, several political, legislative, judicial, consumer, and commercial processes around the world have advanced legalization efforts for the use of medical cannabis (MC). As the use of MC evolve...
Women who inject drugs (WWID) experience unique risks and adverse health outcomes related to injection initiation and patterns of injection drug use. However, there is limited information on injection initiati...
The North American opioid overdose crisis is driven in large part by the presence of unknown psychoactive adulterants in the dynamic, unregulated drug supply. We herein report the first detection of the psycho...
Recovery is a multidimensional process that includes health, quality of life, and citizenship. Recovery capital is a strengths-based concept representing the sum of an individual’s resources that support recov...
There is currently no systematic screening for hepatitis C (HCV) reinfection in people who inject drugs (PWID) after treatment in Belgium. However, in a recent meta-analysis, the overall HCV reinfection rate w...
The effectiveness of collaborative approaches in health interventions is underlined in the literature. Given the serious challenges to adequately managing the HCV epidemic in people who inject drugs (PWID), an...
The original article was published in Harm Reduction Journal 2021 18:99
Drug checking uses chemical analytical technologies to analyze drugs from the unregulated market to reduce substance use-related risks. We aim to examine the frequency of third party use of a community drug ch...
The Correction to this article has been published in Harm Reduction Journal 2021 18:100
Electronic cigarettes are a harm reduction strategy for individuals who smoke cigarettes who cannot or do not want to quit using FDA-approved cessation methods. Identifying perceived facilitators and barriers ...
Heroin and cocaine are among the most dangerous illicit drugs available and their presence on the market is increasing. These facts have led to the investigation of the quality of heroin and cocaine samples se...
Health messages on e-cigarette packs emphasise nicotine addiction or harms using similar wording to warnings on cigarette packs. These may not be appropriate for e-cigarettes which constitute a reduced risk al...
The COVID-19 pandemic in England led to major changes in the delivery of support via stop smoking services (SSS) and to the widespread temporary closure of bricks and mortar e-cigarette retailers (vape shops h...
The original article was published in Harm Reduction Journal 2020 17:74
People who experience non-fatal overdose (NFOD) are at high risk of subsequent overdose. With unprecedented increases in fentanyl in the US drug supply, many Massachusetts (MA) communities have seen a surge in...
Canada is in the midst of an opioid overdose crisis and Alberta has one of the highest opioid use rates across the country. Populations made vulnerable through structural inequities who also use opioids, such ...
People who use drugs (PWUD) are known to fear calling emergency medical services (EMS) for drug overdoses. In response, drug-related Good Samaritan Laws (GSLs) have been widely adopted in the USA and Canada to...
The substance use epidemic in the United States continues to drive high levels of morbidity and mortality, particularly among people who inject drugs (PWID). Poor access to food often co-occurs with drug use a...
Recent data suggest a disproportionate impact of opioid overdoses on Black Americans. The study aims to describe emergency department (ED) visits at a Southern, urban ED pertaining to opioid overdose and assoc...
Methadone Maintenance Treatment (MMT) is widely recognized as one of the most effective ways of reducing risk of overdose, arrest, and transmission of blood-borne viruses like HIV and HCV among people that use...
Individuals who use opioids have higher rates of hospitalization compared to the general population. Insufficiently treated withdrawal and pain are major factors contributing to high rates of self-initiated ho...
We estimate the prevalence of drug injection, the variables associated with having ever injected and the proportion of ever injectors whose first drug injection was for having sex; we describe the first drug i...
Spotting is an informal practice among people who use drugs (PWUD) where they witness other people using drugs and respond if an overdose occurs. During COVID-19 restrictions, remote spotting (e.g., using a te...
Opioid substitution with methadone maintenance treatment (MMT) is shown to reduce illicit opioid use and renew social functioning. Understanding factors that undermine clients’ social functioning during MMT tr...
The sharp rise in opioid use disorder (OUD) among women coupled with disproportionally high rates of unintended pregnancy have led to a four-fold increase in the number of pregnant women with OUD in the United...
The area of substance use is notable for its early uptake of incentives and wealth of research on the topic. This is particularly true for prize-based contingency management (PB-CM), a particular type of incen...
Syringe services programs provide sterile injection supplies and a range of health services (e.g., HIV and HEP-C testing, overdose prevention education, provision of naloxone) to a hard-to-reach population, in...
Bacterial and fungal infections, such as skin and soft tissue infections (SSTIs) and infective endocarditis (IE), are increasing among people who use drugs in the United States. Traditional healthcare settings...
Measuring self-reported experience of health and functioning is important for understanding the changes in the health status of individuals switching from cigarettes to less harmful tobacco and/or nicotine pro...
Georgia has a significant risk of ongoing HIV and HCV outbreak. Within this context, harm reduction aims to reduce risk associated with drug use through community activities, such as peer recruitment and invol...
The relationship between incarceration and risk of overdose has been well-documented in the literature, but few studies document the perspectives of persons at risk of overdose who were incarcerated. This sub-...
Police constitute a structural determinant of health and HIV risk of people who inject drugs (PWID), and negative encounters with law enforcement present significant barriers to PWID access to harm reduction s...
The incidence of opioid-related overdose deaths has been rising for 30 years and has been further exacerbated amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. Naloxone can reverse opioid overdose, lower death rates, and enable a...
Increasing rates of injection drug use (IDU) associated-infections suggest significant syringe service program (SSP) underutilization. Our study objective was to assess practices of safe injection techniques a...
Novel health promotion and treatment uptake initiatives will be necessary to ensure Australia meets 2030 hepatitis C elimination targets. Increasing treatment uptake will be assisted by a better understanding ...
The use of cannabis as medicine (CaM) both prescribed and non-prescribed has increased markedly in the last decade, mirrored in a global shift in cannabis policy towards a more permissive stance. There is some...
Due to the loss of tolerance to opioids during medication-assisted treatment (MAT), this period may represent a time of heightened risk for overdose. Identifying factors associated with increased risk of overd...
Pharmacists are among the most accessible healthcare providers in the United States and uniquely positioned to provide harm reduction services. The availability of pharmacy-based harm reduction services and ph...
Intravenous drug use (IVDU) represents the major factor of HCV transmission, but the treatment uptake among people who inject drugs (PWID) remains low owing to a false presumption of low efficacy. The aim of o...
Enrolling sufficient number of people who inject drugs (PWID) into syringe services programs (SSP) is important to curtail outbreaks of drug-related harms. Still, little is known about barriers and facilitator...
People who inject drugs are often imprisoned, which is associated with increased levels of health risks including overdose and infectious diseases transmission, affecting not only people in prison but also the...
Drug checking is a harm reduction intervention aiming to reduce substance use-related risks by improving drug user knowledge of the composition of unregulated drugs. With increasing fears of fentanyl adulterat...
While there is robust evidence for strategies to reduce harms of illicit drug use, less attention has been paid to alcohol harm reduction for people experiencing severe alcohol use disorder (AUD), homelessness...
The COVID-19 pandemic has necessitated unprecedented changes in the way that health, social, and housing services are delivered to individuals experiencing homelessness and problem substance use. Protecting th...
Studies have suggested that the injection drug use (IDU) was no longer the main transmission route of HIV/AIDS in China. However, there has never been a study to assess the national HIV epidemic among persons ...
Drug use is a growing concern in Ghana. People who inject drugs (PWID) are highly vulnerable to HIV and other infectious diseases. Ghana’s National Strategic Plan for HIV/AIDS 2016–2020 identifies PWID as a ke...
With legal access to medical cannabis in Canada since 2001, there is a need to fully characterize its use at both the individual and population levels. We draw on data from Canada’s largest cohort study of med...
The inclusion of people with lived and living experience of substance use is essential to effective and client-centered harm reduction services and strategies. The aim of this study is to critically examine an...
HIV and Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) infections are responsible for a significant burden of mortality and morbidity, particularly in developing countries. This study sought to determine the prevalence of HIV and He...
Benzodiazepines are commonly prescribed in prisons amidst the controversies surrounding their potential role in causing behavioral disinhibition and aggressive behavior and their association with use and traff...
Digital harm-reduction interventions typically focus on people with severe drug-use problems, yet these interventions have moderate effectiveness on drug-users with lower levels of risk of harm. The difference...
Harm Reduction Journal