Category: Advocacy, Policy, Public Health

Substance Use News September 2017

Hope for Healing: Treatment Close to Home Residents of Cambridge Bay, Nunavut, had to travel hundreds of miles from home to enter treatment programs for substance use problems, and being so far from home posed challenges for people. There are no plans to develop a permanent program in the near future, so what’s the answer?… Read more »

Hepatitis C News

  Treatment Successes It’s getting better: AIDS Map’s Roger Pebody wrote about findings from here in BC that show that  among the populations of people with HCV, an analysis found that older people, those co-infected with HIV, those who have cirrhosis and those who use drugs are more likely to receive direct-acting antiviral HCV treatment… Read more »

Advocacy and Public Health Headlines

Opioid Stats Needed for Indigenous Communities Missing from information and discussion on the national opioid crisis is specific data on how the crisis is affecting people of Indigenous heritage. Earlier this summer, BC’s First Nations Health Authority produced Overdose Data and First Nations in BC: Preliminary Findings, but this is hardly the case across the… Read more »

People living with HIV can feel confident that if they have a sustained undetectable viral load, they will not pass on HIV to their sexual partners.  For some it seems like a bold statement, but the science is clear. In June, the PAN Board of Directors passed a unanimous motion to join the Prevention Access… Read more »

Part 2: Impact of Overdose Care on Frontline Peers Over the past several months, several of PAN’s staff have been sitting down to consult with Candice Norris about her observations and experiences with the opioid overdose public health emergency. Candice is an Aboriginal woman from the Cree/Dene nation who has been in recovery from substance… Read more »

Suicide Prevention Training for Queer Service Providers & Allies

From the Crisis Centre   Join us in Building a Suicide-Safer Queer Community! “We know that as many as 1 in 5 LGBT people have attempted suicide,” says Dr. Travis Salway, a post-doctoral fellow with the BC Centre for Disease Control/UBC School of Population and Public Health. “Thus it is essential to build a network… Read more »

Part 1: The Who, What and How of Drug Use that Impact Overdose Outcomes Over the past several months, several of PAN’s staff have been sitting down to consult with Candice Norris about her observations and experiences with the opioid overdose public health emergency. Candice is an Aboriginal woman from the Cree/Dene nation who has… Read more »

Opioid Crisis Addiction Education 2017

  As we learned in our Rapid Assessment of community –based programs’ needs for capacity building in the face of the overdose crisis, organizational staff and volunteers doing overdose related care and support don’t necessarily have a background in substance use education. This motivated us to develop our Drug Use and Overdose Response Resource page,… Read more »

Overdose Awareness Day – August 31

  August 31st is Overdose Awareness Day, a time to recognize the devastation wrought by the overdose crisis as well as to bring attention to the health and social issues that surround drug use. In 2017 overdose deaths will undoubtedly surpass the number of those in 2016 (922). As of June 30, the number of… Read more »