New 🚨
"The Victoria SAFER Initiative: A community-based prescribed safer supply program using fentanyl formulations in Victoria, BC"
"Our findings demonstrate that prescribed fentanyl options assisted in reducing reliance on the unregulated drug supply."
www.sciencedirect.com/science/arti...
We have ongoing evaluations of the implementation process, nurse-administered iOAT (direct-push IV hydromorphone), and in-hospital distribution of harm reduction equipment—& implementation planning projects for potential hospital-based OPS/SCS, with support from Nova Scotia Health leadership
4/
Partly in response, Nova Scotia Health introduced province-wide "harm reduction" policies for healthcare settings (in 2025)
policy.nshealth.ca/Site_Publish...
& a funded/permanent in-hospital addiction medicine consult service (in late 2023)
both helped legitimize &sustain these interventions
3/
By organizing coalitions of providers and community members, leveraging existing community resources, and inviting perspective of people with lived/living experience, we introduced take-home naloxone, harm reduction equipment, oral and injectable opioid agonist treatment, and informal policies
2/
We have a new paper in @cjphrcsp.bsky.social describing our efforts to improve substance use care in hospital in Halifax, Nova Scotia, from 2018-2024, from the clinical frontlines and community without institutional policy support:
link.springer.com/article/10.1...
1/
If you are in Nova Scotia and are over 50, the health authority mails you a free test every two years. But fewer than half the people who receive the kits return them. It's a great program. Just do the test and mail it back.
Decriminalization worked. B.C. killed it anyway
The province’s drug decriminalization experiment lowered arrests and reduced harm—but it failed a different political test
breachmedia.ca/decriminaliz...
www.cbc.ca/news/red-dee... #ableg
The First Nations Health Authority, a health system partner to the B.C. government, said it is disappointed that it was "not engaged in a decision that will disproportionately impact First Nations people, communities and families."
www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/artic...
The HRNA stands with the UBCIC and echoes the serious concerns they have raised about BC’s decision to end the decriminalization pilot.
We are grateful for UBCIC’s leadership in naming the harms of returning to punitive approaches amidst this ongoing public health emergency.
#bcpoli #cdnpoli
"Dr Wieman also expressed frustration at what she said was the hijacking of the narrative over B.C.'s pilot to decriminalize simple drug possession
noting that it was introduced, in part, to address the overrepresentation of First Nations people in the justice system as a result of systemic racism"
this is an important statement & it cuts to the heart of the policy failure
BCs decriminalization pilot didn't fail b/c it was a bad idea, the BC NDP and david eby were not willing to defend it
First Nations peoples in BC died at ~7x the rate of the rest of the population in 2024
Article
I regret B.C.’s decision to end its decriminalization pilot and am disappointed the province has not released an independent evaluation. When governments change course on life-and-death issues, Canadians deserve to see the evidence. See more 👇
Its really essential that people read the full statement and reflect on it
And think honestly & bravely on what our emergency is
each of us and all of us are involved in this, we are all the public
Its oue emergency
There’s no Them
Just us
~
we are responsible to each other
Please read this
"By ending the decriminalization pilot, the Province is failing to treat addiction as a public-health issue, not a criminal one, and is doubling down on policies that have already caused immense harm to First Nations." Grand Chief Stewart Phillip
www.ubcic.bc.ca/ubcic_deeply...
📣 New Report: Unpaid family caregivers are doing essential and often invisible work. Our new community report 🧪shares what caregiving looks like for families supporting people who use drugs in rural Western Canada.
Read more: static1.squarespace.com/static/5ac64...
Kylie's amazing #DisHist #histmed book Jim Crow in the Asylum is out today.
Its also open access, so sharing the link for anyone interested in the histories of race and disability, systemic racism in medicine, histories of madness and asylums, histories of the US South, and more
Just arrived last night!
Postmedia, which recently seized full control of print media in NS (happened in AB decades ago), is driving these wedges into communities that have traditionally been highly sympathetic to poverty.
This will manifest as fearful news stories that create danger out of thin air. Like the story above.
“Limitations in the evidence — such as incomplete outcome reporting, small sample sizes, lack of formal certainty assessments, and limited generalizability to health care systems in Canada — should be considered when making decisions.”
canjhealthtechnol.ca/index.php/cj...
“Policy-makers may consider models of care that incorporate unsupervised or take-home iOAT to expand access to clinically effective and cost-effective care.” 4/
“An economic evaluation from Australia found that a model prioritizing unsupervised iOAT with a smaller proportion of patients receiving supervised iOAT may be cost-effective. Scenarios focused more heavily on supervised iOAT were not cost-effective in that context.” 3/
“Injectable hydromorphone administered under medical supervision showed a good safety profile, with only mild adverse events reported and no significant differences compared to placebo.” 2/
“Injectable opioid agonist therapy (iOAT; IV diamorphine or hydromorphone)… may be more effective than oral OAT alone… in improving treatment retention, reducing illicit opioid and cocaine use, and decreasing interactions with the criminal justice system” 1/
canjhealthtechnol.ca/index.php/cj...
