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Monthly Archives: April 2009

Cannabis use and ‘safe’ identities in an inner-city school risk environment

Conclusion: Inner-city schools may both reflect and reproduce existing patterns of drug use. The concept of risk hierarchies may be important when designing and evaluating school-based drug-prevention strategies. (Source: International Journal of Drug Policy)

The social context of initiation into injecting drugs in the slums of Makassar, Indonesia

Conclusion: To be more effective, the existing harm reduction programmes in Makassar that focus on individualistic behavioural changes need to be complemented with community-based programmes that take into consideration the social and structural context of risk-taking practices amongst young people in the lorong.

Poverty as a smoking trap

Conclusion: Interventions which do not specifically target smoking but which contribute to improving poor smokers’ living conditions, are necessary to promote smoking cessation. (Source: International Journal of Drug Policy)

Understanding the social determinants of behaviours: Can new methods help?

An individual’s behaviour undoubtedly results from a set of complicated processes involving interactions between environmental factors, personal characteristics, and biology. Moreover it is clear that social processes, both through their influence on the social and physical environments in which people live and work, as well as through the transmission of norms and attitudes through social networks, play a key role in shaping behaviours. Understanding these social processes and the ways in which they affect behaviour is fundamental to the identification of the most effective interventions to improve health and reduce inequalities in health.

Geographic approaches to quantifying the risk environment: Drug-related law enforcement and access to syringe exchange programmes

Abstract: The concept of the “risk environment” – defined as the “space … [where] factors exogenous to the individual interact to increase the chances of HIV transmission” – draws together the disciplines of public health and geography. Researchers have increasingly turned to geographic methods to quantify dimensions of the risk environment that are both structural and spatial (e.g., local poverty rates).

Social epidemiology and complex system dynamic modelling as applied to health behaviour and drug use research

Abstract: A social epidemiologic perspective considers factors at multiple levels of influence (e.g., social networks, neighbourhoods, states) that may individually or jointly affect health and health behaviour. This provides a useful lens through which to understand the production of health behaviours in general, and drug use in particular

The drifting city: The role of affect and repair in the development of “Enabling Environments�

Conclusions: Greater attention to the array of assets and opportunities present in urban settings offers fresh insights into the nature of enabling environments and their role in reducing drug related harms and facilitating healthy growth and development. (Source: International Journal of Drug Policy)

The drifting city: The role of affect and repair in the development of “Enabling Environments”

Conclusions: Greater attention to the array of assets and opportunities present in urban settings offers fresh insights into the nature of enabling environments and their role in reducing drug related harms and facilitating healthy growth and development. (Source: International Journal of Drug Policy)

Risk environments and drug harms: A social science for harm reduction approach

Abstract: A ‘risk environment’ framework promotes an understanding of harm, and harm reduction, as a matter of ‘contingent causation’. Harm is contingent upon social context, comprising interactions between individuals and environments.

The adverse health effects of cannabis use: What are they, and what are their implications for policy?

Conclusions: Politically, evidence of adverse health effects favours the status quo in developed countries like Australia where cannabis policy has been framed by the media as a choice between two views: (1) either cannabis use is largely harmless to most users and so we should legalize, or at the very least decriminalize its use; or (2) it harms some of its users so we should continue to prohibit its use.