Publications by authors named "Dykeman Rainbow"

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.

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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.

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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.

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