Projects

New Project: “The Methadone Mess: An international collaborative project to examine the social construction and lived experience of Methadone Maintenance for patients and providers through an intersectional lens”

Methadone Maintenance Therapy (MMT) is an effective, evidence-based medical treatment for individuals struggling with long-term opioid addiction. MMT involves the prescription of methadone as an opioid substitute to assist in the management, reduction and cessation of illicit opioid use; MMT is nationally and internationally the most widely used form of treatment for people who are dependent on opioids. Despite multiple demonstrations of its effectiveness at reducing the social, physical and fiscal harms associated with addiction to opioids, MMT continues to occupy a turbulent and often controversial position within health care and society.

To date, there has been relatively little critical examination of the social construction of MMT. There has also been very little examination of the factors that influence the way MMT is positioned, perceived, and experienced, by MMT prescribers and patients. The seed grant received by the Centre will facilitate the development of an international partnership Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) research proposal, which will serve to address this research gap.

The project plan directly responds to this critical research gap in three important ways:

1) by building on knowledge garnered at a preliminary two-day workshop forum hosted by the research team. This forum provided a platform for shared learning, knowledge exchange, discussion, and debate amongst researchers from across Canada, Australia, the United Kingdom, and the USA in dialogue with public service providers and persons with experience of MMT;

2) by further developing and supporting collaboration between the international community, service providers and persons who have experienced MMT; and

3) by developing a research agenda and specific CIHR funding proposal to examine the social construction and lived experience of MMT in an international context. Some of the core themes selected for incorporation in the CIHR research proposal are: social inequities, gender, mental health, injection drug use, intersectionality and violence.

This project will contribute to the establishment of a research program that will draw on varying perspectives and positions relating to MMT to inform the development of substance use treatment and policy strategies that better serve care providers and service users.

Completed Project: “Understanding the Links between Structural Inequities, Woman Abuse, Substance Use and Mental Ill Health”

The Violence, Mental Health and Substance Use team started their first seed project August 1st, 2010.

As part of the ”Building Bridges: Linking Woman Abuse, Substance use and Mental Ill Health” research project, the Woman Abuse Response Program at BC Women’s Hospital and Health Centre has recently completed focus groups with 100 women impacted by past and/or current experiences of abuse and substance use and/or mental ill health across BC. Preliminary findings indicate that women impacted by violence, mental ill health and/or addiction face multiple, serious structural gaps and barriers when trying to access services that address these overlapping issues. This project will further analyze this data in order to identify structural and health inequities faced by this vulnerable population of women. An intersectional framework will be utilized to strengthen our ability to understand the intersections among multiple forms of structural inequities, including gender, socioeconomic, and racialized inequalities.  As such, the main outcomes of the project will be a codebook and a summary document which outline the structural and health inequalities faced by women impacted by violence and mental ill health and/or substance use in BC. These will inform the future writing of scholarly articles and research such as pilot projects and grant applications undertaken by the Violence, Mental Health and Substance Use theme group. In addition, key gaps in research related to structural and health inequities affecting women with experiences of abuse, substance use and/or mental ill health will be identified, which will help define future research opportunities for the group.

At the May 2011 Critical Inquiries Workshop the project team presented a project poster and handed out project pamphlets that contain the most up to date material currently available on this project.

The Methadone Mess: An international collaborative project to examine the social construction and lived experience of Methadone Maintenance for patients and providers through an intersectional lens