Characteristics of drug users who witness many overdoses: implications for overdose prevention.

Background: Programs to improve response of drug users when witnessing an overdose can reduce overdose mortality. Characteristics of drug users may be associated with the number of overdoses ever witnessed. This information could inform overdose prevention programs.

Ambient temperature and risk of death from accidental drug overdose in New York City, 1990-2006.

Background: Mortality increases as ambient temperature increases. Because cocaine affects core body temperature, ambient temperature may play a role in cocaine-related mortality in particular. The present study examined the association between ambient temperature and fatal overdoses over time in New York City.

Friendship networks of inner-city adults: a latent class analysis and multi-level regression of supporter types and the association of supporter latent class membership with supporter and recipient drug use.

Background: Social support is a multi-dimensional construct that is important to drug use cessation. The present study identified types of supportive friends among the social network members in a community-based sample and examined the relationship of supporter-type classes with supporter, recipient, and supporter-recipient relationship characteristics. We hypothesized that the most supportive network members and their support recipients would be less likely to be current heroin/cocaine users.

Circumstances and witness characteristics associated with overdose fatality.

Study Objective: Emergency physicians have an opportunity to provide overdose fatality prevention interventions to individuals at risk for experiencing or witnessing an overdose to reduce fatality. The present study uses data about the most recent overdose observed by a sample of inner-city drug users to determine the circumstances of overdose that are associated with overdose fatality.

Methods: Participants (n=690) aged 18 years or older were recruited with targeted street outreach.

Oral health in Veterans Affairs patients diagnosed with serious mental illness.

Objectives: We evaluated patient and medication treatment factors associated with self-reported oral health status in patients diagnosed with serious mental illness (SMI) in a large, national sample of patients in the Veterans Affairs (VA) health system.

Methods: 4,769 patients (mean age = 55, 7.8 percent women) were included from the VA's 1999 National Psychosis Registry (NPR) for whom the oral health information gathered by the VA's Large Health Survey of Veterans was available.

Older patients with serious mental illness: sensitivity to distance barriers for outpatient care.

Objectives: To inform health services delivery and to demonstrate the appropriateness of understanding access at the individual's level, we evaluated how patient characteristics affect sensitivity to access barriers. We examined one dimension of access: geographic accessibility. We assessed age differences in sensitivity to distance barriers for outpatient psychiatric and nonpsychiatric care among active Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) patients with serious mental illness.