Open Collections

The use of knowledge translation and legal proceedings to support evidence-based drug policy in Canada : opportunities and ongoing challenges

British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS

There is growing recognition, particularly in the areas of illicit drug policy and HIV prevention, that policy-makers are in many instances implementing suboptimal programs and services because they are not basing their decisions on the best available scientific evidence. One notable example where a policy-making body has failed to use scientific evidence to inform policy is the Canadian federal government’s opposition to Vancouver’s supervised injection facility despite a large body of scientific evidence indicating that the program is associated with a range of health and social benefits. Two of the key strategies that have been used to try to shift drug policy toward an evidence-based approach and maintain the operation of this evidence-based health facility are knowledge translation and legal actions. We provide an overview of these two strategies and hope it will offer lessons for the implementation of evidence-based approaches in other controversial areas of public policy.

Article

eng

Vancouver : University of British Columbia Library

10.14288/1.0339967

Medicine, Faculty of; Other UBC; Medicine, Department of

Reviewed

http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/