SynthesisSocial science & medicine (1982)2014
'Safer environment interventions': a qualitative synthesis of the experiences and perceptions of people who inject drugs.
Synthesis in Social science & medicine (1982), 2014. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 94 papers, 5 of them syntheses that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
94 citing papers in PubMed, 5 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Impact of harm minimization interventions on reducing blood-borne infection transmission and some injecting behaviors among people who inject drugs: an overview and evidence gap mapping.Addiction science & clinical practice · 2024Pooled it
- Clinical guideline for homeless and vulnerably housed people, and people with lived homelessness experience.CMAJ : Canadian Medical Association journal = journal de l'Association medicale canadienne · 2020Guideline
- What constitutes effective problematic substance use treatment from the perspective of people who are homeless? A systematic review and meta-ethnography.Harm reduction journal · 2020Pooled it
- Pooled it
- The experience of initiating injection drug use and its social context: a qualitative systematic review and thematic synthesis.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2017Pooled it
- Assessing the feasibility, acceptability and accessibility of a peer-delivered intervention to reduce harm and improve the well-being of people who experience homelessness with problem substance use: the SHARPS study.Harm reduction journal · 2022Trial
- A peer-delivered intervention to reduce harm and improve the well-being of homeless people with problem substance use: the SHARPS feasibility mixed-methods study.Health technology assessment (Winchester, England) · 2022Trial
- Benefits and barriers: a rapid-ethnographic study on the perspectives of potential and actual clients of Athens' drug consumption room.Harm reduction journal · 2026Article
- Qualitative analysis of barriers and facilitators to healthcare engagement for people with injecting-related invasive infections using a social ecological framework.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2025Article
- Characterizing 'Atmosphere': exploring determinants of regular service attendance amongst integrated supervised consumption site clients in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.Harm reduction journal · 2025Article
- Harnessing telemedicine to deliver patient-centered opioid agonist treatment within a community-based harm reduction service: a mixed methods evaluation.Harm reduction journal · 2025Article
- Negotiating Care and Control: Women's Experiences of Two Harm Reduction Services in Copenhagen.Sociology of health & illness · 2025Article
- Four decades of overdose prevention centres: lessons for the future from a realist review.Harm reduction journal · 2025Review
- Exploring drug consumption rooms as 'inclusion health interventions': policy implications for Europe.Harm reduction journal · 2024Article
- Assessing support for substance use policies among the general public and policy influencers in two Canadian provinces.Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy · 2024Article
- Overdose prevention centres as spaces of safety, trust and inclusion: A causal pathway based on a realist review.Drug and alcohol review · 2024Review
- A qualitative exploration of harm reduction in practice by street-based peer outreach workers.Harm reduction journal · 2024Article
- Long-acting Injectable PrEP Interest and General PrEP Awareness among People who Inject Drugs in the San Diego-Tijuana Border Metroplex.AIDS and behavior · 2024Article
- Characterizing Use of Supervised Consumption Services among Street-involved Youth and Young Adults in the Context of an Overdose Crisis.Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine · 2024Article
- Frame Shift: Focusing on Harm Reduction and Shared Decision Making for People Who Use Drugs Hospitalized With Infections.Clinical infectious diseases : an official publication of the Infectious Diseases Society of America · 2024Article
34 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
Abstract
There is growing acknowledgment that social, structural, and environmental forces produce vulnerability to health harms among people who inject drugs (PWID), and safer environment interventions (SEI) have been identified as critical to mitigating the impacts of these contextual forces on drug-related harm. To date, however, SEIs have been under-theorized in the literature, and how they minimize drug-related risks across intervention types and settings has not been adequately examined. This article presents findings from a systematic review and meta-synthesis of qualitative studies reporting PWID's experiences with three types of SEIs (syringe exchange programmes, supervised injection facilities and peer-based harm reduction interventions) published between 1997 and 2012. This meta-synthesis sought to develop a comprehensive understanding of SEIs informed by the experiences of PWID. Twenty-nine papers representing twenty-one unique studies that included an aggregate of more than 800 PWID were included in this meta-synthesis. This meta-synthesis found that SEIs fostered social and physical environments that mitigated drug-related harms and increased access to social and material resources. Specifically, SEIs: (1) provided refuge from street-based drug scenes; (2) enabled safer injecting by reshaping the social and environmental contexts of injection drug use; (3) mediated access to resources and health care services; and, (4) were constrained by drug prohibition and law enforcement activities. These findings indicate that it is critical to situate SEIs in relation to the lived experiences of PWID, and in particular provide broader environmental support to PWID. Given that existing drug laws limit the effectiveness of interventions, drug policy reforms are needed to enable public health, and specifically SEIs, to occupy a more prominent role in the response to injection drug use.
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What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.