ID: HR19-340

Presenting author: Jade Boyd

Presenting author biography:

Jade Boyd is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Medicine at the University of British Columbia and a Research Scientist at the BC Centre on Substance Use.

“Bed Bugs and Beyond”: An ethnographic analysis of North America’s first women-only supervised drug consumption site

Jade Boyd, Jennifer Lavalley, Samara Mayer, Ryan McNeil

Background: North American communities continue to be impacted by overdose epidemics, increasingly driven by the adulteration of drug supplies with illicitly-manufactured fentanyl and related analogues. Innovative community-led responses have included the expansion of supervised consumption sites, as well as low-threshold models (termed Overdose Prevention Sites; OPS). This presentation explores women’s responses to North America’s first OPS exclusively for women (as well as trans and non-binary women), which opened its doors in Vancouver, Canada’s Downtown Eastside in May of 2017.

Methods: This presentation draws on on-going ethnographic fieldwork with Vancouver’s women-only OPS, SisterSpace, since its inception (May 2017-present), including over 70 hours of observation and 46 in-depth interviews with marginalized women who use drugs, recruited on-site. Data were analyzed thematically using NVivo and with attention to the intersections of race, class, sexuality, and gender.

Results: Women’s experiences of overdose and overdose prevention were shaped by everyday, social and structural violence. Participants characterized SisterSpace as a significantly safer space to consume drugs than their alternatives (e.g., alleys, mixed-gender OPS). Findings illustrate SisterSpace’s unique environment (e.g., the physical set-up, operations, client-base and atmosphere) enabled rich engagement unparalleled at related mixed gender sites, and demonstrate the varied ways in which women experience overdose interventions and drug related harms markedly different than men.

Conclusion: Under the constraints of prohibition, SisterSpace represents an innovative and effective approach to women-centred harm reduction. Recommendations include the ongoing support and necessity of gender-attentive, culturally-safe, and peer-centered approaches to overdose prevention initiatives.