Feasibility and acceptability of multiple methods of recording injecting drug use episode data among people who inject drugs in Melbourne, Australia: a pilot evaluation study protocol.

Introduction: Opioid overdose and blood-borne virus transmission are key health risks for people who inject drugs. Existing study methods that record data on injecting drug risks mostly rely on retrospective self-reporting that, while valid, are limited to being broad and subject to recall bias. The In-The-Moment-Expanded (ITM-Ex) study will evaluate the feasibility and acceptability of multiple novel data collection methods to capture in situ drug injecting data.

Methods And Analysis: ITM-Ex will purposively recruit 50 participants from an existing longitudinal cohort (SuperMIX study) of people who inject drugs in Melbourne, Australia. Over a 4-week study period, participants will be asked to complete baseline/endline spirometry, continuously wear a heart rate monitoring device, complete short-form ecological momentary assessment (EMA) questionnaires for every injecting episode during the study period and return previously used needles/syringes for drug residue testing. These multiple data sources will be combined to conduct a comprehensive analysis of the physiological and risk characteristics of an estimated 800 individual injecting drug use episodes (if participants inject four times weekly). Finally, post-participation qualitative interviews will explore the acceptability of the data collection methods.

Ethics And Dissemination: Ethics approval for ITM-Ex was obtained from Alfred Hospital Ethics Committee (project number 368/22). Results will be disseminated via national and international scientific and public health conferences and peer-reviewed journal publications.Results from ITM-Ex may demonstrate vastly more complete and accurate methods of capturing data on injecting drug use risk and support future development and evaluation of devices to monitor and intervene during drug overdose. Further, ITM-Ex may demonstrate innovative methodologies to support myriad future public health research studies.