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Injection drug use (IDU) may lead to negative health outcomes and increased healthcare utilization. In US Veterans (USV) with opioid use disorder (OUD), there is sparse information about healthcare utilization...
Medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) are under-prescribed to adolescents and young adults (AYA). Few published studies have explored challenges to and opportunities to enhance continuous provision of MOU...
The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) annually tracks American youth and adult smoking prevalence using data from the National Youth Tobacco Survey (NYTS) and the National Health Interview Survey...
Persons who migrate for economic reasons, along with asylum seekers and refugees, face multiple personal experiences and societal inequalities that increase the risk of mental health problems and substance dep...
Regular alcohol use is a predominant risk factor for disease, injury, and social harm. While robust evidence is advocating for implementing interventions to reduce the harms of illegal substance use, less lite...
The concurrent use of opioids and alcohol is particularly dangerous for individuals. Alcohol is commonly seen in opioid overdose death toxicology reports and, concurrent use of alcohol and opioids is often rep...
Amidst a national surge in overdose deaths among racial and ethnic minoritized people and people who use stimulants (cocaine or methamphetamines), our objective was to understand how these groups are adapting ...
Since the 1990s, Vietnam has begun prioritising preventing and combating drug-related crimes (supply reduction) and rehabilitating drug users (demand reduction). In the 2000s, harm reduction approaches in rela...
With the advent of direct acting antivirals (DAAs) the World Health Organisation (WHO) adopted global strategy to eliminate hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection by 2030. In Europe, people who inject drugs (PWID) ...
An online mail order naloxone and harm reduction supply program was created by an interdisciplinary team at the University of Rhode Island College of Pharmacy and hosted on the university website (UNIV). The p...
Management of opioid withdrawal in hospital settings is crucial to improve treatment completion and health outcomes among patients who use opioids, such as heroin. Evidence-based clinical guidelines can suppor...
This article is part of Harm Reduction Journal’s special issue on harm reduction research in the francophone context and specifically the Harm Reduction Network (HARENE). After highlighting the history and cur...
People who use drugs (PWUD) are at increased risk for blood-borne viruses, including hepatitis B (HBV) and delta (HDV). Despite the public health threats both viruses present, awareness remains low among at-ri...
People who use drugs are at elevated sexual and reproductive health risk but experience barriers to services. Syringe services programs (SSP) are an important venue to provide integrated health services. Few s...
The original article was published in Harm Reduction Journal 2024 21:172
Anabolic androgenic steroids (AAS) are synthetic forms of testosterone frequently used as performance enhancing drugs among gay, bisexual, and queer (GBQ) men. Despite widespread use, associated harms, and the...
The U.S. opioid crisis, resulting in nearly 500,000 deaths from 1999 to 2019, has been exacerbated by persistent stigma, which hinders treatment and recovery efforts. This stigma, whether structural, social, o...
Recent years have marked a shift in selling and buying illicit psychoactive drugs from darknet cryptomarkets to publicly accessible social media and messaging platforms. As more users turn to procuring drugs t...
Canada has one of the highest prevalence of cannabis use globally, particularly among young adults aged 20–24 (50%) and youth aged 16–19 (37%). In 2018, Canada legalized recreational cannabis with the aim of p...
The substitution of cannabis for alcohol and other drugs has been conceptualised in a harm reduction framework as where cannabis is used to reduce the negative side-effects, addiction potential, and social sti...
Peer workers are individuals who draw on their personal experiences in a professional capacity to support clients. Existing research on the role of peer workers in mental health, homelessness, and substance us...
On January 31, 2023, a three-year exemption from the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act was granted to the Canadian province British Columbia (BC), allowing the cumulative possession of 2.5 g of specific unre...
Progressive harm reduction policies have been implemented in British Columbia, Canada. However, youth who use drugs face barriers to receiving harm reduction care, resulting in increasing opioid-related hospit...
The original article was published in Harm Reduction Journal 2024 21:128
People who inject drugs (PWID) are a key population at risk of HIV in Iran. We measured the prevalence and covariates of HIV-related risk behaviours among PWID in Iran.
Understanding the heterogeneity of opioid overdose fatalities is critical to developing effective preventive interventions. This study examines patterns of care contacts among people who subsequently died from...
The increasing diversity of psychoactive substances on the unregulated drug market poses significant health, psychological, and social risks to people who use drugs (PWUD). To address these risks, various harm...
COVID-19 vaccination is crucial to reduce the incidence of severe forms of the disease in the population. However, people who use drugs (PWUD) face structural and individual barriers to vaccination, and little...
Most national programmes of opioid agonist therapy (OAT) in Eastern Europe and Central Asia are at a critical juncture for building their sustainability due to decreasing support from the Global Fund and other...
The prevalence of xylazine, a non-opioid tranquilizer not for human consumption, in illicitly manufactured fentanyl is increasing in the United States. However, little is known about xylazine awareness and att...
Polydrug use in the context of chemsex is commonplace among gay, bisexual, and other men-who-have-sex-with-men (GBMSM). This study aimed to examine the differences in experiences of physical, social, and psych...
Individuals who have survived an overdose often have myriad needs that extend far beyond their drug use. The social determinants of health (SDOH) framework has been underutilized throughout the opioid overdose...
The original article was published in Harm Reduction Journal 2024 21:147
Cannabis use can generate potential avoidable harms, hence the need for effective preventive measures and treatment. Studies show the efficacy of harm reduction (HR) in minimizing undesirable consequences asso...
Distinct from western Managed Alcohol Programs (MAPs), Indigenous-led alcohol harm reduction programs can be defined by both ‘culture as healing’ and decolonized harm reduction philosophies. We sought to explo...
In Sweden, there has been a massive transition from cigarette smoking to snus, the Swedish kind of low-toxicity oral tobacco. This product poses very little health risk compared to cigarettes, as illustrated b...
After the 2008 Global Financial Crisis and resulting economic austerity, the rise in illicit drug use engendered an increased need for people who use drugs (PWUD) to access medical care, compounded by the COVI...
In the Northern Territory (NT) of Australia, there are significant evidence gaps about illicit drug use and harms, despite having established monitoring and reporting systems. This paper reports on illicit dru...
Smoking is negatively related to mental health, but there is a paucity of research on the relationship between the use of smokeless tobacco, such as snus, and mental health outcomes, especially in people with ...
Europe has been at the forefront of harm reduction since its inception. These important early steps were in large part a response to the dramatically expanding HIV epidemic, and investing in these innovative i...
The Correction to this article has been published in Harm Reduction Journal 2024 21:197
Emergency Departments (ED) staff, including nurses and physicians, are most directly involved in the care of people who use unregulated substances, and are ideally positioned to provide harm reduction interven...
Over the last decade, India has had an alarming rise in injection of opioids across several cities. Although scale-up of public sector services for people who inject drugs (PWID) in India has occurred over dec...
Fentanyl is increasingly pervasive in the unregulated drug supply and is a driver of drug overdose deaths in the United States. The aims of this study were to characterize and identify correlates of fentanyl p...
The original article was published in Harm Reduction Journal 2022 19:136
The purpose of this study was to explore Muslim’s perceptions and views of raising awareness on safe alcohol use and counterfeit alcohol harms in Islamic countries.
Cannabis is the most common illicit substance used in pregnancy. As use continues to increase, understanding peoples’ behaviors surrounding cannabis use during pregnancy is needed to improve maternal and child...
Opioid use disorder (OUD) poses a global health challenge, and despite medications for opioid use disorder (MOUD) and psychosocial interventions, relapse remains a significant concern. Comorbid psychiatric dis...
The original article was published in Harm Reduction Journal 2024 21:126
In this article the authors offer their perspective on the changes in the Dutch harm reduction field. From the 1970s to the 1990s, the Netherlands emerged as a leader in harm reduction services, driven by gras...
Despite the widespread use of the phrase “harm reduction” and the proliferation of programs based on its principles during the current opioid epidemic, what it means in practice is not universally agreed upon....