Speaker Name: Dr. Dan Devoe
Session Description:
Across North America, supervised drug consumption services have become one of the most debated components of responses to the toxic drug crisis. Despite extensive policy discussion, relatively few evaluations have examined their impacts using individual level health system data.
This session presents new evidence from Alberta using linked administrative health data to examine outcomes associated with supervised consumption services and the effects of service transitions within a real world health system. Drawing on two complementary studies, the presentation explores both outcomes associated with service use and what happens when a service is withdrawn.
The first study examines health outcomes among individuals who accessed supervised consumption services compared with matched individuals who had similar substance related healthcare histories but did not use these services. The second study examines changes in treatment engagement and healthcare utilization following the announcement and closure of an overdose prevention site in Red Deer using a quasi-experimental time series design with a comparison community.
Together, these studies provide a rare opportunity to examine supervised consumption services using person level linkage across emergency department visits, hospitalizations, medication dispensing, and mortality records. Findings highlight the complexity of evaluating harm reduction interventions in rapidly evolving drug environments and underscore the importance of rigorous system level evaluation when designing recovery-oriented systems of care.
Learning Objectives:
1. Understand how linked administrative health data can be used to evaluate supervised consumption services and other addiction services within real world health systems.
2. Describe key methodological challenges involved in assessing outcomes associated with harm reduction services using observational health data.
3. Discuss how evidence from system level evaluations can inform the design and implementation of recovery-oriented systems of care.”
References:
- Day N, Kaufmann K, Devoe DJA, Grubac V, DiMarzo A, Osmanli H, Norton V, Vik S, Mathew N, Tanguay RL, Bahji A. Healthcare utilization and mortality after overdose prevention site closure: a linked cohort analysis using segmented difference-in-differences time series. Addiction. In press. https://doi.org/10.1111/add.70380
- Gariepy G, Prowse RKM, Plouffe R, Graham E. Supervised consumption sites and population-level overdose mortality: a systematic review of recent evidence (2016–2024). Health Promotion and Chronic Disease Prevention in Canada.
- Potier C, Laprévote V, Dubois-Arber F, Cottencin O, Rolland B. Supervised injection services: what has been demonstrated? A systematic literature review. Drug and Alcohol Dependence. 2014;145:48–68.
- Bruneau J, Ahamad K, Goyer ME, Poulin G, Selby P, Fischer B, Wild TC, Wood E. Management of opioid use disorders: a national clinical practice guideline. CMAJ. 2018;190(9):E247–E257.
BIO
Dr. Dan Devoe is a Scientist with the Canadian Centre of Recovery Excellence (CoRE), where his work focuses on addiction epidemiology and health system evaluation. His research uses linked administrative health data to examine treatment engagement, healthcare utilization, and outcomes among people experiencing substance use disorders. He collaborates with provincial health system partners to evaluate addiction and mental health services across Alberta, with a focus on informing evidence based policy and improving recovery oriented systems of care. His work integrates population level data with real world service evaluation to better understand how addiction services function within complex health systems.