Grant: CIHR-IPPH Trailblazer Award - Early Career Population/Public Health Researcher

Injecting remains a primary source of HIV-related harms globally, and people who inject drugs (PWID) have been shown to play a key role in the initiation of other individuals into injection drug use. Data from multiple urban centres in North America suggest that ongoing exposure to injecting increases the risk that populations at risk such as street youth initiate injecting, and that the majority of non-injectors are initiated into injecting by PWID. My research program investigates whether social and structural interventions to reduce HIV risk among PWID may also reduce population's at risk of facilitating injecting initiation. These interventions include opioid substitution therapy (OST), safe injection facilities (SIF), and stable or assisted housing. This addresses a gap in HIV prevention and represents a novel research area with major implications for injection-driven HIV epidemics.