North Carolina Survivors Union, 1116 Grove Street, Greensboro, NC, 27403, USA.
Injury Prevention Research Center, University of North Carolina At Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
Subst Abuse Treat Prev Policy. 2021 Sep 20;16(1):70. doi: 10.1186/s13011-021-00406-6.
Research collaborations between people who use drugs (PWUD) and researchers are largely underutilized, despite the long history of successful, community-led harm reduction interventions and growing health disparities experienced by PWUD. PWUD play a critical role in identifying emerging issues in the drug market, as well as associated health behaviors and outcomes. As such, PWUD are well positioned to meaningfully participate in all aspects of the research process, including population of research questions, conceptualization of study design, and contextualization of findings.
We argue PWUD embody unparalleled and current insight to drug use behaviors, including understanding of novel synthetic drug bodies and the dynamics at play in the drug market; they also hold intimate and trusting relationships with other PWUD. This perfectly situates PWUD to collaborate with researchers in investigation of drug use behaviors and development of harm reduction interventions. While PWUD have a history of mistrust with the medical community, community-led harm reduction organizations have earned their trust and are uniquely poised to facilitate research projects. We offer the North Carolina Survivors Union as one such example, having successfully conducted a number of projects with reputable research institutions. We also detail the fallacy of meaningful engagement posed by traditional mechanisms of capturing community voice. As a counter, we detail the framework developed and implemented by the union in hopes it may serve as guidance for other community-led organizations. We also situate research as a mechanism to diversify the job opportunities available to PWUD and offer a real-time example of the integration of these principles into public policy and direct service provision.
In order to effectively mitigate the risks posed by the fluid and volatile drug market, research collaborations must empower PWUD to play meaningful roles in the entirety of the research process. Historically, the most effective harm reduction interventions have been born of the innovation and heart possessed by PWUD; during the current overdose crisis, there is no reason to believe they will not continue to be.
尽管在社区主导的减少伤害干预方面有着悠久的成功历史，以及药物使用者（PWUD）所经历的日益严重的健康差距，但药物使用者与研究人员之间的研究合作在很大程度上仍未得到充分利用。PWUD 在确定药物市场中出现的新问题以及相关的健康行为和结果方面发挥着至关重要的作用。因此，PWUD 非常有能力有意义地参与研究过程的各个方面，包括提出研究问题、设计研究概念以及使研究结果背景化。
我们认为，PWUD 对药物使用行为具有无与伦比的、当前的洞察力，包括对新型合成药物以及药物市场中动态的理解；他们还与其他 PWUD 建立了亲密和信任的关系。这使 PWUD 能够与研究人员合作，调查药物使用行为并制定减少伤害的干预措施。虽然 PWUD 对医疗界一直存在不信任，但社区主导的减少伤害组织赢得了他们的信任，并非常适合促进研究项目。我们以北卡罗来纳幸存者联盟（North Carolina Survivors Union）为例，该组织与一些知名研究机构成功地开展了多个项目。我们还详细阐述了通过传统方式收集社区意见所带来的虚假的有意义的参与。作为一种替代方法，我们详细介绍了该联盟开发并实施的框架，希望它能为其他社区主导的组织提供指导。我们还将研究定位为为 PWUD 提供多样化就业机会的一种机制，并提供一个实时的例子，说明这些原则如何被纳入公共政策和直接服务提供。
为了有效减轻不断变化和不稳定的药物市场带来的风险，研究合作必须赋予 PWUD 在研究过程的各个方面发挥有意义作用的能力。从历史上看，最有效的减少伤害干预措施源于 PWUD 的创新和奉献精神；在当前的过量用药危机中，没有理由认为他们不会继续这样做。
