Grant: Project Grant

People working in construction and trades bear a disproportionate burden of substance-use related harms, including fatal overdose, despite considerable efforts to address these harms in the sector. There is an urgent need to advance action-oriented research that supports the well-being and occupational outcomes of this occupational group. The Substance Use, Work and Well-Being in Trades and Construction Study seeks to address this gap with a view to developing evidence-based substance use policies, programs and protocols that reduce substance-related harms, improve employment outcomes, and sustain the trades and construction workforce. This multi-pronged, multi-methods study will pair robust research with an integrated knowledge mobilization and exchange strategy, collaborating with workers, unions, people with lived and living experience of substance use, employers and clinicians to bridge critical knowledge gaps and advance evidence-based approaches to substance use in this sector. The study integrates survey-based research among current workers, longitudinal qualitative research among trades and construction workers undergoing medical assessment and monitoring for substance use, and a provincial occupational disease surveillance cohort using linked administrative data. Research activities will advance understandings of the scope and dynamics of substance use and related harms, responses to substance use among workers, and the impacts of current policies and programming, as well as identify potential points of intervention to support prevention, treatment, recovery and return-to-work outcomes. In turn, this research will be mobilized to support workers, employers, unions, clinicians and decision makers in mitigating occupational and substance use-related harms through, anticipating direct, material, and significant impacts on the work and well-being trajectories of people with living experience of substance use in the trades and construction sector.