Risk mitigation guidance and safer supply prescribing among young people who use drugs in the context of COVID-19 and overdose emergencies.

Across North America, overlapping overdose and COVID-19 emergencies have had a substantial impact on young people who use drugs (YPWUD). New risk mitigation guidance (RMG) prescribing practices were introduced in British Columbia, Canada, in 2020 to allow people to decrease risk of overdose and withdrawal and better self-isolate. We examined how the prescribing of hydromorphone tablets specifically impacted YPWUD's substance use and care trajectories.

Staying Together No Matter What: Becoming Young Parents on the Streets of Vancouver.

Among young people who use drugs in the context of entrenched poverty and homelessness, pregnancy is often viewed as an event that can meaningfully change the trajectory of their lives. However, youth's desires and decision-making do not always align with the perspectives of various professionals and systems regarding how best to intervene during pregnancies and early parenting. Drawing on longitudinal interviews and fieldwork with young people in Vancouver, Canada, we explore how their romantic relationships powerfully shaped understandings of what was right and wrong and which actions to take during pregnancy and early parenting, and how these moral worlds frequently clashed with the imperatives of healthcare, criminal justice, and child protection systems.

Navigating treatment in the shadow of the overdose crisis: Perspectives of youth experiencing street-involvement across British Columbia.

Objective: Youth experiencing street-involvement are particularly vulnerable to substance use-related harms. Since an overdose public health emergency was declared in British Columbia (BC) in 2016, there have been concerted efforts to expand youths' access to integrated mental health and substance use treatment across the province. The present study sought to explore how youth were navigating this rapidly evolving treatment landscape.

Harm reduction calls to action from young people who use drugs on the streets of Vancouver and Lisbon.

Vancouver, Canada, and Lisbon, Portugal, are both celebrated for their world-leading harm reduction policies and programs and regarded as models for other cities contending with the effects of increasing levels of drug use in the context of growing urban poverty. However, we challenge the notion that internationally celebrated places like Lisbon and Vancouver are meeting the harm reduction needs of young people who use drugs (YPWUD; referring here to individuals between the ages of 14 and 29). In particular, the needs of YPWUD in the context of unstable housing, homelessness, and ongoing poverty-a context which we summarize here as "street involvement"-are not being adequately met.

The generative potential of mess in community-based participatory research with young people who use(d) drugs in Vancouver.

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is increasingly standard practice for critical qualitative health research with young people who use(d) drugs in Vancouver, Canada. One aim of CBPR in this context is to redress the essentialization, erasure, and exploitation of people who use(d) drugs in health research. In this paper, we reflect on a partnership that began in 2018 between three university researchers and roughly ten young people (ages 17-28) who have current or past experience with drug use and homelessness in Greater Vancouver.