Trainings and Resources

The National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine defines stigma as a range of negative attitudes, beliefs and behaviors that are associated with certain conditions such as addiction. Dr. Nora Volkow, Director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), has been a leading voice in talking about the “chilling effect” stigma has on our ability to address substance use and addiction in our country. In an April 2020 perspective piece published in the New England Journal of Medicine and in her NIDA blog piece, Dr. Volkow explains how stigma can prevent people from seeking care and can even contribute to their continuing addiction. We encourage our visitors to read Dr. Volkow’s writings as well as to familiarize themselves with the efforts to reduce stigma led by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) including the NIH HEAL InitiativeSM, which has made addressing stigma a key element in their efforts to address opioid addiction.

In the United States, opioid overdose is an escalating public health issue resulting in untimely deaths. In Philadelphia, PA, the setting for this study, 907 overdose deaths occurred in 2016. Persons who inject drugs [PWIDs] often witness opioid overdoses. Towards this end, this thesis: examined reactions to opioid overdoses among PWIDs; investigated the diffusion and uptake of an Opioid Overdose Prevention Program [OOPP]; and assessed the study’s setting using the Risk Environment framework

The United States is in the midst of an unprecedented opioid epidemic. In order to implement effective population-level response strategies to this epidemic, health departments and community-based organizations must understand both the size and characteristics of the local population affected. Local data regarding the opioid epidemic are sparse and don’t fully characterize the population of those most affected, such as people who inject drugs (PWID). Without these data, it is difficult to know which epidemic response strategies are meeting the most pressing community needs and whether services are delivered at the appropriate scale. For these reasons, we developed this toolkit for population size estimation with specific emphasis on applying population estimation methods among PWID in rural communities.

The National Alliance of State and Territorial AIDS Directors (NASTAD) hosted the Hepatitis A and Hepatitis B Vaccination Efforts in People Who Inject Drugs webinar last week, September 10, 2020. The session featured Centers for Disease Control and Prevention subject matter experts who discussed the epidemiology of hepatitis A and hepatitis B in people who use and inject drugs and the rationale for the vaccination recommendations. The session also featured several jurisdictions and partner organizations who shared their lessons learned and best practices for reaching and implementing vaccination services in this community.

This letter to the editor in The New England Journal of Medicine evaluates the use of an undisclosed, unsanctioned safe consumption site in the United States. The letter begins by discussing the positive outcomes seen through sanctioned safe consumption injection sites in other countries.