Sex work study live-tweet starting now.
Tonight's study was published last month in the International Journal of Drug Policy by Goldenberg et al: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31838244
The topic is looking at police-related barriers to harm reduction among sex workers.
Tonight's study was published last month in the International Journal of Drug Policy by Goldenberg et al: ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31838244
The topic is looking at police-related barriers to harm reduction among sex workers.
There have been quite a few studies recently showing that police interactions can have negative effects on sex workers' ability to do things like successfully negotiate condom use or access health services.
The current study looks at the same concept as applies to risk of overdose among sex workers. With both sex work and substance use being criminalized activities in Canada (where the study takes place), there seems like there would be a good chance that police behaviour...
...could affect harm reduction behaviours relating to substance use among sex workers.
The data itself comes from a study I've covered over a dozen times before. Briefly: sex workers (outdoor and indoor) were recruited from the Vancouver area starting in 2010. The cohort was followed all the way to 2017 (for the current paper).
This study covered 624 active sex workers who reported using injection or non-injection substances during the study period. The median age of the sample 34 years. 43.4% were sexual minorities. 52.6% worked primarily outdoors, 38.1% escorting, 5.8% in brothels/parlours.
60.6% used non-injection opioids, 63.1% injection opioids, 96.3% non-injection stimulants, and 54.3% injection stimulants.
68.6% of sex workers reported at least one instance of police barrier to harm reduction during the follow-up period. 55.6% reported difficulty accessing drugs, 43.4% rushed smoking, 30.3% rushed injection, 27.6% had police confiscate/break equipment...
...26.1% were harrassed by police, 20.5% had drugs or money stolen by police, 15.2% had difficulty accessing equipment, 9.5% had difficulty accessing clean rigs.
Without controlling for anything else, having experienced a police related barrier to harm reduction in the past six months was associated with a 72% increase in the odds of experiencing an overdose.
Briefly, other strong correlates of overdose were injection opioid use (+187% odds), injection stimulant use (+126% odds), daily injection drug use (vs less frequent use) (+289% odds), and experiencing physical/sexual violence (+108% odds).
After controlling for other effects, exposure to police-related barriers to harm reduction in the past six months was associated with a 115% increase in the odds of overdose.
So the results of this study suggest that even controlling for other factors, police negatively impacting harm reduction and overdose risk among sex workers. This highlights the need to reduce unnecessary interactions between police and sex workers.
Well, that's tonight's study.
As always, thanks for the interactions and comments. If you have any topics or studies you'd like to see covered, just get in touch.
See you next Sunday!
As always, thanks for the interactions and comments. If you have any topics or studies you'd like to see covered, just get in touch.
See you next Sunday!
