BACKGROUND International research shows that injecting drug users (IDUs) can encounter many barriers when they try to access drug treatment and other services. However, the existing literature is mostly quantitative and does not consider the kinds of factors that injectors themselves identify as enabling them to access and benefit from services. Responding to this gap in knowledge, our paper ex...

We explored the timescale, spatial spread, and risk group population structure of HIV-1 subtype B', the cause of explosive blood-borne HIV-1 epidemics among injecting drug users (IDUs) and former plasma donors (FPDs) in Asia. Sequences from FPDs in China formed a distinct monophyletic cluster within subtype B'. Further analysis revealed that subtype B' was founded by a single lineage of pandemi...

Beliefs about whether people can change ("lay theories" of malleability) are known to have wide-ranging effects on social motivation, cognition, and judgment. Yet rather than holding an overarching belief that people can or cannot change, perceivers may hold independent beliefs about whether different people are malleable-that is, lay theories may be target-specific. Seven studies demonstrate t...

This study compares the injecting and sexual risk-behaviour of young injectors, with injectors over the age of 25. All respondents presented for the first time at the Merchants' Quay Health Promotion Unit between May 1st 1997 and February 28th 1998. Analysis revealed that the young injectors were significantly more likely to report recently borrowing and lending used injecting equipment, and in...

This study demonstrates an ethnographically critically informed process evaluation of piloting an HIV intervention program targeting injection drug users. The authors used systematic ethnographic methods to identify and evaluate the factors that facilitated or inhibited message diffusion. Findings indicated that communication patterns and strategies advocated in training sessions did not transl...

In this article we discuss the findings from a grounded theory study in which we explored how women residing in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside (DTES) minimized some of the physical, psychological, and interpersonal harms associated with crack cocaine use, and identify the social, economic, and political factors that influence safer use. Data were collected over a 3-month period and involved grou...

This qualitative study examines the interpersonal and structural barriers to drug treatment program entry, retention, and outcomes experienced by injection drug-using couples, and the program policies regarding injection drug-using couples seeking treatment in New York, New York. Our findings reveal a mismatch between the substantial need for concurrent and coordinated treatment for partnered i...

Syringe exchange has been a cornerstone of HIV prevention strategies for people who inject drugs. It has been one of the most rapidly expanding and developing areas of work, and has had major significance as a symbol of new aims, working practices and working ideologies for those seeking to help drug users reduce their risk of HIV infection or of transmitting it to others. Programmes in Britain...

The arrests, detentions, prosecutions, and other legal actions taken against drug-dependent pregnant women distract attention from significant social problems, such as our lack of universal health care, the dearth of policies to support pregnant and parenting women, the absence of social supports for children, and the overall failure of the drug war. The attempts to "protect the fetus" undertak...