Grant: Catalyst Grant: Cannabis and Mental Health - Priority populations

Existing guidelines for cannabis use among youth focus primarily on providing warnings and offer little in terms of practical harm reduction advice. This catalyst grant will engage youth who seek help for mental health and substance use concerns at the Victoria Youth Clinic Foundry (VYCF) in dialogue about Canada's adult-focused low risk cannabis use guidelines. In doing so, we leverage our close pre-existing collaboration between youth and staff at the VYCF and researchers at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research (CISUR). The VYCF serves more than 100 new youth every month, with a current client population of 3,000 youth. Many of the youth accessing services at the clinic have moderate-severe mental health and substance use issues and sometimes require Opioid Agonist Treatment (OAT) or withdrawal management. The clinic works closely with youth-oriented health and social care agencies throughout the Metro Victoria area, including the Victoria Native Friendship Centre, the Umbrella Society and AIDS Vancouver Island, all of which have given their strong support for our proposal. The VYCF is also part of a province-wide network of youth-oriented clinics, known as Foundry BC. The academic applicants at CISUR work within an interdisciplinary research institute and have an international reputation in evaluating the costs and harms of substance use, methods for promoting harm reduction, and have been conducting community participatory research projects with the VYCF for more than two decades. Together our team, which include medical and health professionals, researchers, and people with lived experience, will work with VYCF youth to develop age-appropriate lower risk cannabis use guidelines that can later be validated and scaled-up for other Foundry clinics in BC.