Grant: Planning and Dissemination Grant - Institute Community Support

The leadership of people who use drugs in developing health promotion, policy advocacy, service delivery programs plays a crucial role in improving evidence-based drug policies and practices in Canada. Yet despite their valuable contributions, people who use drugs are often undervalued and underrepresented in these areas. Tokenistic consultation perpetuates a hierarchical academic approach that fails to meaningfully recognize the knowledge and perspectives of the participants and end users of research on substance use-related polices: People who use drugs, themselves. In response, the Centre on Drug Policy Evaluation (CDPE) and community advisors have jointly established a Community Steering Committee (CSC) to challenge these practices and help fully incorporate people who use drugs' voices in the design, implementation, and evaluation of evidence-informed drug policies. The objectives of this proposal are three-fold: 1) To empower and build the capacity of the CSC through comprehensive training covering substance use epidemiological research, research ethics, interviewing skills, and grant proposal development; 2) To create co-learning opportunities between clinical trainees with the people who use drugs, and discuss community-oriented and harm reduction-based healthcare; and 3) To identify research priorities in substance use policy research in Canada in consultation with policymakers, researchers, healthcare professionals, and people who use drugs.