Grant: Canadian Research Initiative in Substance Misuse - Nodes

Despite the enormous burden of disease attributable to harmful drug and alcohol use, many evidence-based tools in substance use prevention and treatment remain greatly under-utilized. In this context, urgent action is required to develop and incorporate evidence-based strategies to address the health and social harms of substance use in Canada. Vancouver, BC is ideally positioned to be a regional network within CRISM, as the city has a long-standing epidemic of illicit drug use for which many substance use programs have been implemented. Building on this environment, we seek to fulfill the following objectives: 1)To engage with provincial stakeholders, including researchers, service providers and the affected community in BC, to establish a collaborative team of addiction researchers, service providers and affected community members positioned to establish a network and undertake addiction clinical trials as part of CRISM; 2)To work with provincial, municipal, and aboriginal government stakeholders to identify regional health system policy priorities for clinical research opportunities and seek optimal alignment between scientific objectives with health policy directions; 3)Once the team is established, to establish research priorities, network governance, knowledge translation and communication capacity aimed towards participation in the national CRISM network; 4)To conduct pilot research aimed at consolidating governance and function, while establishing information technology and other requirements for conducting multi-site clinical trials; 5)To work with the CRISM teams in the Prairie provinces, Ontario and Quebec to establish the structure and governance of the national CRISM network. Our team includes a diverse network of knowledge users, service providers, representatives of the affected community, and research scientists, which ideally positions us to undertake collaborative research and implementation of evidence-based approaches to substance use.