ReviewDrug and alcohol review2024
Overdose prevention centres as spaces of safety, trust and inclusion: A causal pathway based on a realist review.
Review in Drug and alcohol review, 2024. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 11 papers.
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
11 citing papers in PubMed.
- Moral foundations and attitudes towards supervised consumption services: a regional moderation study.Harm reduction journal · 2026Article
- A community-based systematic review of economic evaluations of overdose prevention sites for people who use drugs: a study protocol.Substance abuse treatment, prevention, and policy · 2026Article
- Realist review of managed alcohol programmes for people experiencing alcohol dependence and homelessness: what works, for whom, and in what circumstances?Harm reduction journal · 2026Review
- Benefits and barriers: a rapid-ethnographic study on the perspectives of potential and actual clients of Athens' drug consumption room.Harm reduction journal · 2026Article
- Characterizing 'Atmosphere': exploring determinants of regular service attendance amongst integrated supervised consumption site clients in Vancouver's Downtown Eastside.Harm reduction journal · 2025Article
- Building connection: overdose survivors' and professional service providers' perspectives on immediate post-overdose care.The International journal on drug policy · 2025Article
- Resident and staff experiences of structural barriers to a housing-based overdose prevention site in Vancouver, Canada: "There is a double standard if you smoke".Canadian journal of public health = Revue canadienne de sante publique · 2025Article
- 50 years of harm reduction in Europe: high time for transformation.Harm reduction journal · 2025Review
- Four decades of overdose prevention centres: lessons for the future from a realist review.Harm reduction journal · 2025Review
- 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
- Exploring drug consumption rooms as 'inclusion health interventions': policy implications for Europe.Harm reduction journal · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
8 authors.
Funding
Abstract
issuesOverdose prevention centres (OPC) are non-residential spaces where people can use illicit drugs (that they have obtained elsewhere) in the presence of staff who can intervene to prevent and manage any overdoses that occur. Many reviews of OPCs exist but they do not explain how OPCs work. APPROACH: We carried out a realist review, using the RAMESES reporting standards. We systematically searched for and then thematically analysed 391 documents that provide information on the contexts, mechanisms and outcomes of OPCs. KEY
findingsOur retroductive analysis identified a causal pathway that highlights the feeling of safety - and the immediate outcome of not dying - as conditions of possibility for the people who use OPCs to build trust and experience social inclusion. The combination of safety, trust and social inclusion that is triggered by OPCs can - depending on the contexts in which they operate - generate other positive outcomes, which may include less risky drug use practices, reductions in blood borne viruses and injection-related infections and wounds, and access to housing. These outcomes are contingent on relevant contexts, including political and legal environments, which differ for women and people from racialised minorities.
conclusionsOPCs can enable people who live with structural violence and vulnerability to develop feelings of safety and trust that help them stay alive and to build longer term trajectories of social inclusion, with potential to improve other aspects of their health and living conditions.
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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.