Research project Risks of injection drug use in a Swedish context
Risks of injection drug use in a Swedish context: Prevention of harms in practice according to users, treatment staff, and societal actors
This project is developed in collaboration with the Stockholm Needle Exchange Program (NEP). It will shed light on how risks and harms are understood and can be prevented from different actors’ perspectives and in response to central aspects of the practical work.
The aim is to increase our knowledge on how people who inject drugs (PWID), treatment staff and other societal actors reason about whether and how risks and harms can be prevented, and how this relates to the interaction between individuals, social situations (e.g., social network, injection) and institutions (e.g., drugs policy, public debate).
Project description
Despite the introduction of a number of harm reduction measures in Sweden, injection drug use (IDU) is still associated with major medical and social harms that can be limited by prevention measures. Such harms hit this group of drug users particularly hard, but the risks also vary in an interplay between individual (e.g., tolerance, co-morbidity) and institutional (e.g., policy) factors. For increased knowledge about the risks and harms of IDU, and to improve prevention, treatment and policy, professional actors in the field have requested in-depth research in the field.
This project, developed in collaboration with the Stockholm Needle Exchange Program (NEP), therefore sheds light on how risks and harms are understood and can be prevented from different actors’ perspectives and in response to central aspects of the practical work.
The aim is to increase our knowledge on how people who inject drugs (PWID), treatment staff and other societal actors reason about whether and how risks and harms can be prevented, and how this relates to the interaction between individuals, social situations (e.g., social network, injection) and institutions (e.g., drugs policy, public debate). By collecting and analyzing qualitative data (interviews, media and policy material) building upon quantitative register data from the NEP, the project’s four sub-studies provide new knowledge about how risks, harms, poor health and death can be prevented based on users’ (micro level), staff’s (meso level) and societal perspectives (macro level). An in-depth analysis of differences between these levels can provide suggestions for feasible preventive measures to be implemented in practice.
The project contributes with knowledge on how risks and harms are created in interaction between individuals, groups and social institutions and how we can create beneficial conditions for good health in a particularly vulnerable group, by strongly considering also the users’ views on risk and risktaking.
Project members
Project managers
Jessica Storbjörk
Associate professor
Members
Lena Eriksson
Researcher
martin Kåberg
Chief physician
Josefin Månsson
Senior lecturer, associate professor
Eva Samuelsson
Senior lecturer, associate professor
Jukka Törrönen
Professor
Katarina Winter
Universitetslektor
