ArticleContemporary drug problems2023
Between Care and Control: Examining Surveillance Practices in Harm Reduction.
Article in Contemporary drug problems, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 22 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.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
22 citing papers in PubMed, 47 citations in OpenAlex.
- "Sometimes I'm interested in seeing a fuller story to tell with numbers" Implementing a forecasting dashboard for harm reduction and overdose prevention: a qualitative assessment.BMC public health · 2025Trial
- A continuum of disconnection: the impacts of safer supply program closures on continuity of care, transition, and total loss of service access.Harm reduction journal · 2026Article
- A qualitative study of the impacts of a government crackdown against revenue sharing between pharmacies and patients in Vancouver, Canada.Discover public health · 2026Article
- Negotiating Care and Control: Women's Experiences of Two Harm Reduction Services in Copenhagen.Sociology of health & illness · 2025Article
- "Street sweeps": The municipal government-enforced confiscation of personal belongings among unstably housed people who use drugs in Vancouver, Canada.Public health · 2025Article
- The potential use of digital technologies to enhance opioid agonist treatment in rural and remote communities of British Columbia, Canada.Harm reduction journal · 2025Article
- Defining terminology and outcome measures for evaluating overdose response technology: An international Delphi study.Drug and alcohol review · 2025Article
- "It's something we're connected to": Acceptability and adoption of overdose detection technologies implemented in San Francisco permanent supportive housing.Journal of substance use and addiction treatment · 2025Article
- Reimagining subjectivities in place: Necropolitical logics of safer supply and housing in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2025Article
- Impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on supervised consumption service delivery in Vancouver and Surrey, Canada from the perspective of service providers.Discover public health · 2025Article
- Exploring Black civil society perspectives of drug decriminalization reforms in the Baltimore context: a participatory action qualitative study.Critical public health · 2025Article
- Relational anonymity in reducing the harms of illicit drug use: accounts of users of dark web- and street-based services in Finland.Harm reduction journal · 2024Article
- Increases in housing rules and surveillance during COVID-19: impacts on overdose and overdose response in a community-based cohort of sex workers who use drugs in Vancouver, BC.Harm reduction journal · 2024Article
- Implementing Canada's first national virtual phone based overdose prevention service: lessons learned from creating the National Overdose Response Service (NORS).Harm reduction journal · 2024Article
- "I'm just searching to get better": Constructions of treatment citizenship on injectable opioid agonist treatment.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2024Article
- Awareness and knowledge of drug decriminalization among people who use drugs in British Columbia: a multi-method pre-implementation study.BMC public health · 2024Article
- Preference for hotline versus mobile application/countdown-based mobile overdose response services: a qualitative study.Harm reduction journal · 2024Article
- Planning and implementing community-based drug checking services in Scotland: a qualitative exploration using the consolidated framework for implementation research.Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy · 2024Article
- Supervised on-site dosing in injectable opioid agonist treatment-considering the patient perspective. Findings from a cross-sectional interview study in two German cities.Harm reduction journal · 2023Article
- "We just don't have the space for it": Geographies of survival and spatial triage in overdose prevention sites.Health & place · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors at 3 institutions in 2 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
As harm reduction programs and services proliferate, people who use drugs (PWUD) are increasingly subjected to surveillance through the collection of their personal information, systematic observation, and other means. The data generated from these practices are frequently repurposed across various institutional sites for clinical, evaluative, epidemiological, and administrative uses. Rationales provided for increased surveillance include the more effective provision of care, service optimization, risk stratification, and efficiency in resource allocation. With this in mind, our reflective essay draws on empirical analysis of work within harm reduction services and movements to reflect critically on the impacts and implications of surveillance expansion. While we argue that many surveillance practices are not inherently problematic or harmful, the unchecked expansion of surveillance under a banner of health and harm reduction may contribute to decreased uptake of services, rationing and conditionalities tied to service access, the potential deepening of health disparities amongst some PWUD, and an overlay of health and criminal-legal systems. In this context, surveillance relies on the enlistment of a range of therapeutic actors and reflects the permeable boundary between care and control. We thus call for a broader critical dialogue within harm reduction on the problems and potential impacts posed by surveillance in service settings, the end to data sharing of health information with law enforcement and other criminal legal actors, and deference to the stated need among PWUD for meaningful anonymity when accessing harm reduction and health services.
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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.