Holistic Supports for Street Nurses and Front-line Workers during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Street nurses who serve people experiencing homelessness and substance abuse are at risk of vicarious trauma and long-term mental health challenges. These risks have increased during the COVID-19 pandemic due to a concomitant spike in opioid overdoses and deaths in Canada, fewer available support services and worsening social challenges. This article describes innovative interdisciplinary and participatory research currently being undertaken to develop and evaluate a multifaceted support program to promote the holistic well-being of street nurses and their front-line colleagues.

The Ottawa Citizen Engagement and Action Model (OCEAM): A Citizen engagement Strategy Operationalized Through The Participatory Research in Ottawa, Management and Point-of-care of Tobacco (PROMPT) Study: A Community Based Participatory Action Research Project in Inner City Ottawa.

Plain Language Summary: The PROMPT study is a community-based research project designed to understand the factors which affect smoking as well as ways to manage, reduce and quit smoking among people who use drugs in Ottawa. There is strong medical evidence that smoking tobacco is related to more than two dozen diseases and conditions. Smoking tobacco remains the leading cause of preventable death and has negative health impacts on people of all ages.

Healthcare Utilization, Legal Incidents, and Victimization Following Traumatic Brain Injury in Homeless and Vulnerably Housed Individuals: A Prospective Cohort Study.

Objective: To characterize the associations between a history of traumatic brain injury (TBI) and subsequent healthcare utilization, legal involvement, and victimization.

Setting: Three major Canadian cities.

Participants: A total of 1181 homeless and vulnerably housed adults who were single and 18 years or older.

Barriers to access of maternity care in kenya: a social perspective.

Objective: In response to high maternal mortality rates, the global community has rallied to improve the state of maternal health worldwide. However, progress towards the fifth Millennium Development Goal, "Improve Maternal Health," has been disappointingly slow. There is a pressing need to address the factors that contribute to maternal mortality, one of which is access to care.

Managed alcohol as a harm reduction intervention for alcohol addiction in populations at high risk for substance abuse.

Background: Managed alcohol programmes (MAP) are a harm reduction strategy used to minimise the personal harm and adverse societal effects that alcohol dependence can lead to by providing an alternative to zero-tolerance approaches that incorporate drinking goals (abstinence or moderation) that are compatible with the needs of the individual, and promoting access to services by offering low-threshold alternatives. This enables clients to gain access to services despite continued alcohol consumption and works to help the patient understand the risks involved in their behaviour and make decisions about their own treatment goals.

Objectives: To assess the effectiveness of MAP treatment regimens (serving limited quantities of alcohol daily to alcoholics) on their own or as compared to moderate drinking (self-controlled drinking), screening and brief intervention using a harm reduction approach, traditional abstinence-based interventions (12 step programmes) and no intervention.

Creating and testing the concept of an academic NGO for enhancing health equity: a new mode of knowledge production?

Context: Collaborative action is required to address persistent and systematic health inequities which exist for most diseases in most countries of the world.

Objectives: The Academic NGO initiative (ACANGO) described in this paper was set up as a focused network giving priority to twinned partnerships between Academic research centres and community-based NGOs. ACANGO aims to capture the strengths of both in order to build consensus among stakeholders, engage the community, focus on leadership training, shared management and resource development and deployment.

Shelter-based convalescence for homeless adults.

Objectives: Homelessness is associated with increased hospital costs and length of stay, and medical or surgical conditions are typically complicated by secondary diagnoses of substance abuse or mental illness. Convalescence care to provide timely treatment has not been analyzed. This is a retrospective study of diagnoses and utility of shelter-based convalescence in a cohort of homeless subjects.