EQUIP Emergency: study protocol for an organizational intervention to promote equity in health care.

Background: Social inequities are widening globally, contributing to growing health and health care inequities. Health inequities are unjust differences in health and well-being between and within groups of people caused by socially structured, and thus avoidable, marginalizing conditions such as poverty and systemic racism. In Canada, such conditions disproportionately affect Indigenous persons, racialized newcomers, those with mental health and substance use issues, and those experiencing interpersonal violence.

Differentiating the Drug Normalization Framework: A Quantitative Assessment of Cannabis Use Patterns, Accessibility, and Acceptability Attitudes among University Undergraduates.

Background/objectives: The drug normalization framework investigates the social integration of substance use. This article contributes a quantitative assessment of cannabis normalization as differentiated by social location predictors.

Methods: Logistic and zero-inflated negative binomial regression models assess three areas of cannabis normalization: accessibility, acceptability, and recent use.

A common public health-oriented policy framework for cannabis, alcohol and tobacco in Canada?

Support for a public health approach to cannabis policy as an alternative to prohibition and criminalization is gaining momentum. Recent drug policy changes in the United States suggest growing political feasibility for legal regulation of cannabis in other North American jurisdictions. This commentary discusses the outcomes of an interdisciplinary policy meeting with Canadian experts and knowledge users in the area of substance use interventions.

Engineering behaviour change in an epidemic: the epistemology of NIH-funded HIV prevention science.

Social scientific and public health literature on National Institutes of Health-funded HIV behavioural prevention science often assumes that this body of work has a strong biomedical epistemological orientation. We explore this assumption by conducting a systematic content analysis of all NIH-funded HIV behavioural prevention grants for men who have sex with men between 1989 and 2012. We find that while intervention research strongly favours a biomedical orientation, research into the antecedents of HIV risk practices favours a sociological, interpretive and structural orientation.

Sexual safety practices of massage parlor-based sex workers and their clients.

The Outreach and Research in Community Health Initiatives and Development (ORCHID) project examines social and structural factors that contribute to HIV/AIDS risk among women working in Vancouver's indoor sex industry and their clients. From 2006 to 2009, two mixed method studies were undertaken in ORCHID: one exploring experiences of women working in the indoor sex industry, mainly in massage parlors, and the other exploring experiences of men as sex "buyers." Both studies emphasize sexual health and safety, risk and protective behaviors, and related contextual factors.

Condom use as situated in a risk context: women's experiences in the massage parlour industry in Vancouver, Canada.

Investigation into condom use in sex work has aroused interest in health promotion and illness prevention. Yet there remains a dearth of inquiry into condom use practices in the indoor sex industry, particularly in North America. We performed a thematic analysis of one aspect of the indoor sex work by drawing on data from a larger mixed-methods study that investigated women's health issues in the massage parlour industry in Vancouver, Canada.

Community-based HIV and STI prevention in women working in indoor sex markets.

Community research into women's experiences in the indoor commercial sex industry illustrated an urgent need for sexually transmitted infection (STI) and HIV education, prevention, testing, and treatment and culturally appropriate services to support the sexual and reproductive health of commercial sex workers (CSWs). This work also revealed that a high number of immigrant--primarily Asian--women are involved in the indoor sex industry. In response, the authors developed a community-academic research partnership to design and implement a blended outreach research program to provide STI and HIV prevention interventions for indoor CSWs and their clients.