"It would really support the wider harm reduction agenda across the board": A qualitative study of the potential impacts of drug checking service delivery in Scotland.

Autor: Falzon D; Salvation Army Centre for Addiction Services and Research, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling, United Kingdom., Parkes T; Salvation Army Centre for Addiction Services and Research, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling, United Kingdom., Carver H; Salvation Army Centre for Addiction Services and Research, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling, United Kingdom., Masterton W; Salvation Army Centre for Addiction Services and Research, Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Stirling, Stirling, United Kingdom., Wallace B; Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research, University of Victoria, Victoria, Canada., Craik V; Public Health Scotland, Glasgow, United Kingdom., Measham F; Department of Sociology, Social Policy and Criminology, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, United Kingdom.; The Loop, Registered Charity, Manchester, United Kingdom., Sumnall H; Public Health Institute, Liverpool John Moores University, Liverpool, United Kingdom., Gittins R; Via, London, United Kingdom., Hunter C; Alcohol and Drug Services, NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde, Glasgow, United Kingdom., Watson K; Scottish Ambulance Service, Edinburgh, United Kingdom., Mooney JD; Public Health Directorate, NHS Grampian, Aberdeen, United Kingdom., Aston EV; School of Applied Sciences, Edinburgh Napier University, Edinburgh, United Kingdom.
Jazyk: angličtina
Zdroj: PloS one [PLoS One] 2023 Dec 14; Vol. 18 (12), pp. e0292812. Date of Electronic Publication: 2023 Dec 14 (Print Publication: 2023).
DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0292812
Abstrakt: Drug checking services (DCS) enable individuals to voluntarily submit a small amount of a substance for analysis, providing information about the content of the substance along with tailored harm reduction support and advice. There is some evidence suggesting that DCS may lead to behaviour and system change, with impacts for people who use drugs, staff and services, and public health structures. The evidence base is still relatively nascent, however, and several evidence gaps persist. This paper reports on qualitative interviews with forty-three participants across three Scottish cities where the implementation of community-based DCS is being planned. Participants were drawn from three groups: professional participants; people with experience of drug use; and affected family members. Findings focus on perceived harm reduction impacts of DCS delivery in Scotland, with participants highlighting the potential for drug checking to impact a number of key groups including: individual service users; harm reduction services and staff; drug market monitoring structures and networks; and wider groups of people who use and sell drugs, in shaping their interactions with the drug market. Whilst continued evaluation of individual health behaviour outcomes is crucial to building the evidence base for DCS, the findings highlight the importance of extending evaluation beyond these outcomes. This would include evaluation of processes such as: information sharing across a range of parties; engagement with harm reduction and treatment services; knowledge building; and increased drug literacy. These broader dynamics may be particularly important for evaluations of community-based DCS serving individuals at higher-risk, given the complex relationship between information provision and health behaviour change which may be mediated by mental and physical health, stigma, criminalisation and the risk environment. This paper is of international relevance and adds to existing literature on the potential impact of DCS on individuals, organisations, and public health structures.
Competing Interests: The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funders had no role in the design of the study; in the collection, analyses, or interpretation of data; in the writing of the manuscript; or in the decision to publish the results.
(Copyright: © 2023 Falzon et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.)
Databáze: MEDLINE
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