Characteristics of supervised injection site clients and factors associated with requiring overdose intervention, Montreal, Canada, 2018–2022
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: Supervised injection sites (SIS) offer a hygienic environment in which people can inject drugs under observation; as such, these harm reduction services have been on the forefront of the overdose epidemic. We sought to understand factors predictive of an overdose requiring an emergency response intervention at SIS in Montréal, Canada. METHODS: We used administrative data from all four Montréal SIS from 1 March 2018 - 31 October 2022 to first calculate the rate of onsite overdose requiring intervention (e.g., naloxone or oxygen administration, nurse or paramedic assessment, etc.) and descriptive statistics. We then used a logistic regression model, with generalized estimating equations to adjust for clients' repeat visits, to test associations between onsite overdose intervention and client gender, age, drug injected (fentanyl vs other opioid vs non-opioid), most frequent injection location, frequency of injecting, duration of injecting, housing stability, attendance at multiple SIS, and time period (before or after 15 March 2020). RESULTS: During the observation period, Montréal SIS received 122,509 visits from 2,127 unique clients. The rate of overdose requiring intervention was 8.16 (95 % CI 7.66, 8.68) per 1000 visits. While 278 (13 %) of clients experienced an onsite overdose intervention, these clients accounted for 64,267 (52 %) SIS visits. Transgender clients (aOR = 2.28, 95 % CI 1.18, 4.41, compared to men) and clients younger than 25 were at greater risk of experiencing an onsite overdose requiring intervention (e.g., clients 35-44 had an aOR = 0.44, 95 % CI 0.30, 0.64, compared to clients younger than 25). Injecting most often in a public place was associated with greater risk of an onsite overdose requiring intervention (aOR = 3.62, 95 % CI 3.04, 4.30), while reporting unstable housing (aOR = 0.56, 95 % CI 0.47, 0.66) and attending more than one SIS (aOR = 0.13, 95 % CI 0.10, 0.16) predicted lesser risk. Compared to clients who reported injecting daily, greater risk of overdose requiring intervention was observed among those who reported injecting 3-6 days a week (aOR = 1.48, 95 % CI 1.18, 1.85), 1-2 days a week (aOR = 2.43, 95 % CI 1.90, 3.11), and "occasionally" (aOR = 2.60, 95 % CI 2.13, 3.18), but not those who reported not injecting in the past several months (aOR = 0.44, 95 % CI 0.25, 0.79). Compared to clients who had been injecting for five or more years, an injection duration of 1-4 years was associated with reduced risk of an overdose requiring intervention (aOR = 0.79, 95 % CI 0.64, 0.98), while those newer (<1 year) to injecting were at greater risk of such an intervention (aOR = 2.11, 95 % CI 1.50, 2.97). Compared to clients intending to inject fentanyl, we observed a lower risk of an overdose requiring intervention for those injecting other opioids (aOR = 0.22, 95 % CI 0.18, 0.26) or non-opioids (aOR = 0.06, 95 % CI 0.04, 0.08). Injecting after 15 March 2020 was also associated with greater risk (aOR = 1.99, 95 % CI 1.65, 2.41). CONCLUSION: Across four Montréal SIS, site visits with an overdose requiring intervention were associated with transgender identity, younger age, stable housing, intending to inject fentanyl, injecting less frequently than daily, injecting for either more than five years or less than a year, single site attendance, and injecting most often in a public place. Montréal SIS serve a diverse clientele who inject drugs, with differing risks of onsite overdose.
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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 | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.003 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.005 | 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".