ArticleJournal of general internal medicine2022
Reduced Emergency Department Visits and Hospitalisation with Use of an Unsanctioned Safe Consumption Site for Injection Drug Use in the United States.
Article in Journal of general internal medicine, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 16 papers.
What it found
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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.
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Who cites it
16 citing papers in PubMed, 34 citations in OpenAlex.
- "Once I started going… I had this central wheel hub": Drivers of overdose prevention center engagement and connections to care in Rhode Island.The International journal on drug policy · 2026Article
- One-Year Reattendance Rates to the Emergency Department for Acute Illicit Drug Exposure in Western Australia: A Retrospective Registry Study.Emergency medicine Australasia : EMA · 2026Article
- Health, Costs, and Injection-Related Infections at a Hypothetical Overdose Prevention Center.JAMA network open · 2026Article
- Leveraging pooled medical examiner records to surveil complex and emerging patterns of polysubstance use in the United States.The International journal on drug policy · 2025Article
- U.S. substance use harm reduction efforts: a review of the current state of policy, policy barriers, and recommendations.Harm reduction journal · 2025Review
- Study assessing the effectiveness of overdose prevention centers through research (SAFER): an overview of the study protocol.Harm reduction journal · 2025Article
- Risk Factors for Infective Endocarditis and Serious Injection Related Infections Among People Who Inject Drugs in Los Angeles, CA and Denver, CO.Drug and alcohol dependence · 2025Article
- Article
- Nowhere to go: a qualitative study examining the health of people who experience emergency shelter service restrictions in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.BMJ public health · 2025Article
- Radical hospitality: Innovative programming to build community and meet the needs of people who use drugs at a government-sanctioned overdose prevention site in San Francisco, California.The International journal on drug policy · 2024Article
- Drug Use-Related Discrimination in Healthcare Settings and Subsequent Emergency Department Utilization in a Prospective Cohort Study of People With a History of Injection Drug Use.Substance use & misuse · 2024Observational
- Article
- Spatiotemporal Analysis Exploring the Effect of Law Enforcement Drug Market Disruptions on Overdose, Indianapolis, Indiana, 2020-2021.American journal of public health · 2023Article
- 'Why would we not want to keep everybody safe?' The views of family members of people who use drugs on the implementation of drug consumption rooms in Scotland.Harm reduction journal · 2022Review
- The overdose epidemic: a study protocol to determine whether people who use drugs can influence or shape public opinion via mass media.Health & justice · 2022Article
- A Decentralized Model for Supervised Consumption Services.Journal of urban health : bulletin of the New York Academy of Medicine · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
6 authors at 4 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundSafe consumption sites (SCS) are an evidence-based intervention to prevent drug use-related harm. In late 2014, an organisation in an undisclosed location in the USA opened an unsanctioned SCS.
objectiveTo evaluate whether use of the unsanctioned SCS affected medical outcomes.
designA prospective cohort study.
settingNeighbourhoods surrounding the SCS.
participantsPeople who injected drugs were recruited and interviewed at baseline and 6 and 12 months from 2018 to 2020.
interventionPeople using the SCS could bring pre-obtained drugs to consume via injection, which were monitored by trained staff with naloxone. MAIN MEASURES: Any overdose, number of non-fatal overdoses, skin and soft tissue infections, emergency department utilisation, number of emergency department visits, hospitalisation and number of nights spent in hospital. KEY
resultsA total of 494 participants enrolled in the study; 59 (12%) used the SCS at least once. We used propensity score weighting to analyse the association between SCS utilisation and measures. People using the SCS were 27% (95% CI: 12-46%) less likely to visit the emergency department, had 54% (95% CI: 33-71%) fewer emergency department visits, were 32% (95% CI: 4-57%) less likely to be hospitalised, and spent 50% (95% CI: 1-85%) fewer nights in hospital. Though not significant, people using the SCS had a lower likelihood of overdosing and slightly higher likelihood of skin and soft tissue infections.
conclusionsOur findings support the use of SCS in the USA to reduce the growing burden of acute care service utilisation related to injection drug use.
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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.