Living Conditions And Illness Among Injecting Drug Users In Montreal
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract Background: The harsh living conditions of injecting drug users (IDUs) are associated with substantial morbidity. Despite the many steps taken to improve the health of IDUs, notably through harm reduction programs, most strategies have focused primarily on proximal risk factors, whereas distal determinants have been poorly addressed. 1.2. Objectives: This study identifies distal and proximal factors associated with recent episodes of illness among IDUs living in Montreal in 2005. 1.3. Methods: A cross-sectional survey was carried out between February and September 2005 in 666 IDUs 18 years old and over, living in Montreal, Quebec. 1.4. Results: The living conditions of IDUs illustrate their marginality: 70% are on social welfare, 38% beg for a living, 48% have a history of imprisonment, and 20% live on the street. Among the study sample, 176 subjects (26%) reported an episode of illness in the 6 months before the interview. Multiple regression analysis showed that the pathway from socio-demographic conditions to illness in IDUs is mediated by financial strain, marginality, risk behaviors and chronic health conditions. Eight distal factors were associated with episodes of illness in the last 6 months: female gender, older age, bisexual orientation, financial strain (begging on the street, receiving help from community centers), marginality (history of imprisonment or fine for criminal offenses, stealing, having no identity card), heroin injection, combined use of both cocaine and heroin, and sharing injection material. More proximally related factors were HIV infection, HCV infection and depression. 1.5. Conclusions: Current IDUs in Montreal live under difficult conditions which have serious health consequences. Efforts to improve their health should focus on changing these conditions.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".