Grant: Project Grant

British Columbia is facing an ongoing public health emergency due to toxic, unregulated drugs. While overdose prevention services have expanded in recent years, most of these sites were designed for people who inject drugs. Today, however, most overdose deaths happen when people smoke drugs. Places where people can smoke drugs in a safer, monitored setting are an important response to this shift, but they have not been well studied. This four-year research project will be looking at how supervised inhalation services are working in different parts of British Columbia, including across the Vancouver Coastal region and on Vancouver Island. The goal is to better understand how these services reduce overdose risk and support better health outcomes, who they reach and how clients experience these sites, and how they can be improved and expanded (including how we could reduce barriers to operating these sites). The study will follow people who use these harm reduction services and combine this information with interviews from people who run these sites (including staff, and decision-makers). We will also link survey information (from clients) with health records to see how service use relates to emergency room visits, hospital stays, and access to treatments for opioid use disorder and other healthcare. People with lived and living experience, service providers, health authorities, and policy partners have been involved since the beginning of this project to make sure the research is useful and grounded in real-world needs. The findings will provide practical evidence to guide service delivery, funding decisions, and policy at a time when clear guidance is urgently needed to respond to the toxic drug crisis.