Pubdate: Wed, 08 Dec 2004
Source: Vancouver Courier (CN BC)
Copyright: 2004 Vancouver Courier
Contact:  http://www.vancourier.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/474
Author: David Carrigg, Staff writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/hr.htm (Harm Reduction)

VANCOUVER A LABORATORY FOR STUDYING DRUG USE

The U.S. government is spending $3 million to study Vancouver's injection 
drug users.

Thomas Kerr, an investigator with the locally based Vancouver Injection 
Drug Users Study, said the American money will pay for another five years 
of research and create a research program to monitor youth who become 
intravenous drug users.

Kerr said the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, through the 
National Institutes of Health, is interested in the Vancouver project 
because of its value as a study of the intravenous drug using population.

"There are very few ongoing studies of injection drug users in the world 
and Vancouver's is unique because of the complex issues in the Downtown 
Eastside and new prevention programs being initiated," said Kerr, referring 
to the city's supervised injection site.

"It's not about harm reduction, it's about the study of the natural history 
of drug addiction. We also want to follow youth who are at risk of drug 
injection and begin injecting. We want to know why some people start and 
what is the course of that problem."

The Vancouver study was created in 1996 by the B.C. Centre for Excellence 
in HIV/AIDS to investigate the HIV epidemic in the Downtown Eastside.

"We documented HIV infection among injection drug users in the Downtown 
Eastside and that alerted policy makers. It was our investigators that 
initially reported the 19 per cent HIV incidence rate. That was the first 
warning that something really awful was happening. Since then we've 
documented the dynamics of the HIV epidemic, including risk behaviours and 
risk groups, such as women and aboriginals."

The U.S. National Institutes of Health had previously given the Vancouver 
study $1.5 million in research funding between 1998 and 2001. Since then, 
the research project has relied on provincial and federal funding.

Kerr said researchers spend $60,000 a year paying the 1,500 injection drug 
users in the study to answer questions and provide blood samples every six 
months.

"People often make a big deal about drug users being paid to participate in 
a study, that the money might be spent on drugs. But if the study was a 
heart medication you would receive an honorarium, there's nothing unusual. 
It would be unethical to treat drug users any differently," said Kerr, who 
has a doctorate in educational psychology.

Kerr said researchers track participants if they leave the Vancouver area 
and try to refer them to social services.

"Our study staff are exceptionally good at following people, whether they 
go to prison or back to a [native] reserve or move provinces. We are 
interested in mobility, so if they move out of the area we won't stop 
following them," Kerr said.
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MAP posted-by: Terry Liittschwager