Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Overdose is the leading cause of death in British Columbia (BC) for people aged 19-59. The BC Provincial Overdose Cohort (BC-ODC) is a set of health datasets that are linked together for people who have died of fatal overdose in the province, or who have come in contact with health care for non-fatal overdose. These data have been used to inform approaches to responding to overdose in BC since 2016. The BC-ODC data are now available in a new data platform which provides more updated data (updated monthly) than was previously available. Our team has co-led a process with provincial partners to identify new priorities for research with the updated BC-ODC data. We have gathered survey responses from >50 partners (i.e. health care providers, decision-makers, community drug user organizations). Through this process, we have identified three priority topic areas that will be used to organize and plan our team's upcoming research. Findings from this process are relevant to the overdose public health emergency response provincially, and nationally. Findings are also relevant to informing responses to other public health emergencies, where the interests of partners is required to make sure that research responds to community needs. The research priorities identified in this work will ensure the BC-ODC data is used to inform timely and targeted responses to reduce the impact of the overdose public health emergency on human health.