ReviewHarm reduction journal2017
Housing First and harm reduction: a rapid review and document analysis of the US and Canadian open-access literature.
Review in Harm reduction journal, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 33 papers, 2 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
33 citing papers in PubMed, 2 syntheses or guidelines pooled it.
- Pain clinic definitions in the medical literature and U.S. state laws: an integrative systematic review and comparison.Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy · 2018Pooled it
- Defining the external implementation context: an integrative systematic literature review.BMC health services research · 2018Pooled it
- Mortality in homeless people enrolled in the French housing first randomized controlled trial: a secondary outcome analysis of predictors and causes of death.BMC public health · 2021Trial
- Healthcare First: Delivering Immediate, Non-Contingent, and Coordinated Services Through the Street Medicine Model.Research square · 2026Article
- Legitimacy, embedding, and learning framework: lessons from individual placement and support for analyzing sustainment and scale-up of complex psychosocial interventions.International journal of public health · 2026Review
- Challenges and opportunities in embedding core components of substance use health care into Housing First programs.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Organising housing and service provision for persons with co-occurring substance use and mental health problems: a scoping review in the ROP Municipal.BMC psychiatry · 2025Article
- "Now that I'm here, I actually have the stability and the time to really think about stuff like that": Perspectives on medications for opioid use disorder in low-threshold harm reduction housing.Journal of substance use and addiction treatment · 2025Article
- COVID-19 response and the unhoused communities in Sacramento: a mixed methods study with policy implications.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Housing Insecurity among Emergency Department Patients with Opioid Use Disorder.The western journal of emergency medicine · 2025Article
- Recovery support services as part of the continuum of care for alcohol or drug use disorders.Addiction (Abingdon, England) · 2025Article
- The prevalence of homelessness and its associated factors among people who inject drugs in Iran: results from nationwide bio-behavioral surveillance surveys in 2020 and 2023.BMC public health · 2025Article
- Beyond all-or-nothing: why binary thinking undermines harm reduction in addiction medicine.BJPsych open · 2025Article
- Staff views on overdose prevention in permanent supportive housing.Harm reduction journal · 2025Article
- Developing a comprehensive inventory to define harm reduction housing.Harm reduction journal · 2025Article
- A community-academic partnership to develop an implementation support package for overdose prevention in permanent supportive housing.Journal of substance use and addiction treatment · 2025Article
- Navigating the nexus between British Columbia's public consumption and decriminalization policies of illegal drugs.Health research policy and systems · 2024Article
- Using alone at home: What's missing in housing-based responses to the overdose crisis?Harm reduction journal · 2024Review
- Interrogating perceived relevance and feasibility of HIV pre-exposure prophylaxis: A novel model of PrEP acceptability among cisgender women who inject drugs.SSM. Qualitative research in health · 2023Article
- Observational
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
5 authors.
Funding
Abstract
backgroundHousing First is an evidence-based practice intended to serve chronically homeless individuals with co-occurring serious mental illness and substance use disorders. Despite housing active substance users, harm reduction is an often-overlooked element during the Housing First implementation process in real-world settings. In this paper, we explore the representation of the Housing First model within the open-access scholarly literature as a potential contributing factor for this oversight.
methodsWe conducted a rapid review of the US and Canadian open-access Housing First literature. We followed a document analysis approach, to form an interpretation of the articles' content related to our primary research questions.
resultsA total of 55 articles on Housing First were included in the final analysis. Only 21 of these articles (38.1%) included explicit mention of harm reduction. Of the 34 articles that did not discuss harm reduction, 22 provided a description of the Housing First model indicating it does not require abstinence from substance use; however, descriptions did not all clearly indicate abstinence was not required beyond program entry. Additional Housing First descriptions focused on the low-barrier entry criteria and/or the intervention's client-centeredness.
conclusionsOur review demonstrated a lack of both explicit mention and informed discussion of harm reduction in the Housing First literature, which is likely contributing to the Housing First research-practice gap to some degree. Future Housing First literature should accurately explain the role of harm reduction when discussing it in the context of Housing First programming, and public agencies promoting Housing First uptake should provide resources for proper implementation and monitor program fidelity to prevent model drift.
Indexed as
Identifiers
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.