Michael’s PhD will investigate how the use of opioid substitution therapy during incarceration and post-release influences substance use, health and mortality outcomes among people who inject drugs.
The project aims to use co-design strategies to develop an innovative, evidenced informed and needs based service model of to meet the needs of people release from prison in Victoria with alcohol and other drug dependence histories.
Ashleigh's PhD focuses on health service utilisation of people in prison with histories of injecting drug use
SuperMIX is a cohort of people who inject drugs (PWID) that has been running in various forms at the Burnet Institute since 2008.
Building on work previous undertaken by the Burnet Institute to evaluate the St Kilda 24-Hour NSP, this study will establish a near Melbourne-wide system to monitor how NSPs are being used and identify service-specific trends in service provision.
ACT Health is examining the feasibility of establishing a medically supervised injecting centre/drug consumption service (hereafter drug consumption room) in the ACT.
Using in depth interviews to explore the lived experience of individuals using ORT while incarcerated and post-release, Lisa's Masters project aims to better understand the impact of the fully subsidised ORT program in the 4 weeks post release period and beyond.
Alice's Masters project aims to understand any behavioural approaches that PWID apply to opioid overdose prevention. Research findings will be distributed to PWID and community health workers to help prevent future overdose.
The Identifying factors that improve the health of prisoners who inject drugs study aims to examine complex inter-relationships with a goal to provide unparalleled data on which to build a platform for future intervention.
Burnet were commissioned by Windana to evaluate whether the implementation of an orientation program at the therapeutic community has improved client outcomes and staff satisfaction.
Stelliana's PhD focuses on exploring the impact of direct acting antiviral hepatitis C treatment on health, well-being and everyday life, particularly among people who inject drugs
Penny's PhD focuses on health service utilisation of people who inject drugs
Reece's PhD focuses on reoffending and mental health in a population of people who inject drugs.
Burnet have been commissioned by QLD Corrective Services to undertake an evaluation of the introduction of opioid substitution therapy into Queensland prisons.
Burnet were commissioned by Salvation Army to explore the role and value of the 24 hour NSP service provided in St Kilda
This PhD project is focused on young adult prisoners with a history of injecting drug use.
Providing directly acting antiviral therapy (DAA) for hepatitis C in the community may improve hepatitis C treatment uptake and completion, therefore decreasing the morbidity and mortality associated with this infection.
The Treatment And Prevention (TAP) Study will investigate the efficacy and feasibility of treating people who inject drugs with hepatitis C virus (HCV) in community-based settings with a 12-week course of oral therapy of sofosbuvir and ledipasvir.
This project aims to describe the challenges related to data collection and analysis of longitudinal studies with injecting drug users and develop novel counterfactual and regression models to assess how recruitment and attrition bias impacts on the generalizability and reliability of study outcomes.
This project will address an important gap in communication between staff of Drug Consumption Rooms around the world. It will also provide information and evidence to inform the care of people you inject drugs.
Using social network mapping and analysis, this project will explore the types of social networks people experiencing significant substance-related problems are involved in, and the mechanisms behind social identity change with view to enhancing ongoing recovery options for those who choose to access treatment.
This PhD project involves a critical analysis of the rise of the ‘recovery’ concept in the Australian alcohol and other drug sector.
This project will use emergency department and inpatient hospital records to identify the extent to which an opioid treatment database captures the population experiencing opioid-related harm.
The research will examine drug-related morbidity and mortality, and health service utilisation, among adults released from prison in two Australian states.
This pilot study will explore and document the life trajectories of a cohort of older injectors in Australia to identify the needs of this population, which will in turn inform the development of a larger study more focused on public health policy and practice.
Danielle's research investigates the behaviours and health outcomes of young people who inject drugs in Melbourne.
This PhD project aims to determine whether early treatment of hepatitis C virus infection is worthwhile clinically and economically. Factors such as treatment response, quality of life during treatment, incidence of re-infection and cost-effectiveness and cost-utility of hepatitis C treatment will be examined.
This project aims to assess the long term impact of chronic HCV infection on morbidities and mortality risk, as well as investigate factors associated with hepatitis C (HCV) assessment, treatment uptake and predictors of response to therapy among people who inject drugs (PWID). The overall goal is to explore and address the main barriers to enhanced HCV treatment in this PWID population.
This project documents and analyses the successful establishment of a recently introduced policy to make naloxone available to potential overdose witnesses in the ACT (the “Expanding Naloxone Availability in the ACT (ENAACT) program”).
This project will describe attitudes to, and engagement in drug use (with a particular focus on injecting drug use) among members of Melbourne’s East African migrant communities.
This project involved a mapping exercise of people who use/inject drugs in order to identify and distinguish the different ‘tribes’ and sub-groups of drug users, including those groups at greatest risk of drug related harm, who make up the broad based community of people who use drugs in Victoria.
This project uses data from a large Melbourne cohort of injecting drug users, as well as an international collaboration of cohort studies to identify behavioural, social, virus and host factor determinants of hepatitis C primary infection, reinfection, and spontaneous clearance.
This project will explore attitudes towards existing threshold limits and perceptions of benefits, costs and impacts of thresholds, as well as perceptions of likely effects if threshold quantities were modified.
The identification of over ten newly acquired cases of HCV in AMC provides an opportunity to better characterise HCV transmission in a prison setting. This project will describe the case series in detail and explore possibility of in-prison transmission.
This project will explore the attitudes and opinions of people who inject drugs towards drug policy in Australia. This qualitative study complements a larger quantitative study on drug user policy attitudes currently being conducted by the Drug Policy Modelling Program (DPMP) at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre in NSW.
This PhD will explore health service utilisation patterns of people who inject drugs (PWID) and the associated morbidity/mortality outcomes. The barriers and enablers to health service utilization by PWID will also be examined, and the risks and protective factors associated with health and wellbeing outcomes in PWID will be evaluated.
IDIN is a joint initiative of CREIDU and Anex. IDIN is made up of practitioners, policy makers and researchers from the alcohol and other drug sector. IDIN meets three times a year to share knowledge and communicate research findings in the areas of injecting drug use including emerging trends, treatment service approaches, and other initiatives in the field.
This Burnet Institute project will optimise HBV vaccination among PWID within the Melbourne Injecting Cohort Study (MIX) longitudinal study to trial and evaluate the accessibility and efficacy of an HBV vaccination outreach delivery model to people who inject drugs
This project involves a collaboration between the Yarra Drug and Health Forum and the Burnet Institute. The project will firstly assess the need for a Supervised Injecting Facility (SIF) in the City of Yarra, Melbourne by documenting local evidence of public injecting drug use and associated impacts on public amenity. Secondly, a context-appropriate SIF operational model will be proposed and described.
The IDRS is a national annual study conducted in each Australian capital city jurisdiction.