Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Canada, including British Columbia (BC), continues to face unprecedented epidemics of opioid use and overdose. Despite the widespread implementation of a range of harm reduction interventions (e.g., supervised drug consumption sites, take-home naloxone programs) throughout the country, opioid use and overdose deaths continue to climb at an alarming rate. At this time, it is widely recognized that very significant gaps in the delivery of opioid addiction treatment remain, including a lack of novel second-line treatments, as well as a widespread failure to effectively implement evidence-based practices. Accordingly, the overall goal of my research program is to conduct transformative research that will optimize the opioid addiction system of care. This work has high potential to address the public health emergency in BC. Building on my background as a clinician-scientist, and interdisciplinary training my program of research seeks to address critical gaps in health research in Canada. Through a combination of interventional and observational research approaches I will address two related objectives: (1) to advance the implementation of evidence-base treatments for opioid use disorder (OUD) by developing a clinical research program evaluating innovative and promising treatment strategies; and (2) to assess the impact of innovative and evolving addiction medicine programs and policies (e.g., new clinical guidelines, emergent pharmacotherapies, integrated models of care) on engagement in the OUD care cascade and related comorbidities (e.g., hepatitis C [HCV], HIV) among people who use drugs (PWUD). I believe my proposed program of research has high potential to generate strong evidence to inform the implementation of evidence-based and patient-centered interventions along the continuum of opioid addiction care, and thereby reduce health inequities faced by people who use drugs in BC and elsewhere. And as such, is directly relevant to CIHR-IPPH's mandate.