What features of drug treatment programs help, or not, with access? : a qualitative study of the perspectives of family members and community-based organization staff in Atlantic Canada
department or school: Medicine, Faculty of
department or school: Non UBC
department or school: Population and Public Health (SPPH), School of
data provider: DSpace
identifier citation: Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy. 2024 Mar 22;19(1):20
rights copyright: The Author(s)
creator: Mathias, Holly
creator: Jackson, Lois A.
creator: Buxton, Jane A.
creator: Dubé, Anik
creator: Kiepek, Niki
creator: Martin, Fiona
creator: Martin, Paula
issued: 2024-11-12T23:53:49Z
issued: 2024-03-22
description: Background: Withdrawal management and opioid agonist treatment (OAT) programs help to reduce some of the harms experienced by people who use substances (PWUS). There is literature on how features of drug treatment programs (e.g., policies and practices) are helpful, or not helpful, to PWUS when seeking access to, or in, treatment. There is, however, relatively little literature based on the perspectives of family members/family of choice of PWUS and community-based organization staff within the context of Atlantic Canada. This paper explored the perspectives of these two groups on what was helpful, or not, about drug treatment programs in Atlantic Canada in terms of supporting access to, and retention in, treatment. Methods: One-on-one qualitative telephone interviews were conducted in 2020 with the two groups. Interviews focused on government-funded withdrawal management and OAT programs. Data were coded using a qualitative data management program (ATLAS.ti) and analyzed inductively for key themes/subthemes using grounded theory techniques. Results: Fifteen family members/family of choice and 16 community-based organization staff members participated (n = 31). Participants spoke about features of drug treatment programs in various places, and noted features that were perceived as helpful (e.g., quick access), as well as not helpful (e.g., wait times, programs located far from where PWUS live). Some participants provided their perceptions of how PWUS felt when seeking or accessing treatment. A number of participants reported taking various actions to help support access to treatment, including providing transportation to programs. A few participants also provided suggestions for change to help support access and retention such as better alignment of mental health and addiction systems. Conclusions: Participants highlighted several helpful and not helpful features of drug treatment programs in terms of supporting treatment access and retention. Previous studies with …
aggregated CHO: https://circle.library.ubc.ca/rest/handle/2429/89660
note: R E S E A R C H Open Access© The Author(s) 2024. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.Mathias et al. Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy (2024) 19:20 https://doi.org/10.1186/s13011-024-00602-0Substance Abuse Treatment, Prevention, and Policy*Correspondence:Holly Mathiashmathias@ualberta.caFull list of author information is available at the end of the articleAbstractBackground Withdrawal management and opioid agonist treatment (OAT) programs help to reduce some of the harms experienced by people who use substances (PWUS). There is literature on how features of drug treatment programs (e.g., policies and practices) are helpful, or not helpful, to PWUS when seeking access to, or in, treatment. There is, however, relatively little literature based on the perspectives of family members/family of choice of PWUS and community-based organization staff within the context of Atlantic Canada. This paper explored the perspectives of these two groups on what wa…
has type: Article
is shown at: 10.14288/1.0447262
language: eng
peer review status: Reviewed
provider: Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library
publisher: BioMed Central
publisher DOI: 10.1186/s13011-024-00602-0
rights: Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)
rights URI: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
scholar level: Faculty
scholar level: Researcher
scholar level: Other
subject: Family members
subject: Community-based organizations
subject: Drug treatment access
subject: Addiction treatment
subject: OAT
subject: Withdrawal management
subject: Qualitative research
type: Text
identifier URI: http://hdl.handle.net/2429/89660