Frequently Asked Questions

+ What is Co/Lab?

Co/Lab is a collaborative community laboratory on substance use and harm reduction. Co/Lab aims to generate evidence on substance use, harms, and the social and structural determinants of harms, and to put that evidence to work in enhancing services and policies in British Columbia (BC).

+ What is a community of practice?

A community of practice (CoP) is a virtual network of researchers and knowledge users who come together to share knowledge and develop expertise around a shared topic of interest – in this case, substance use and related harms.

The Co/Lab CoP consists of numerous venues for participation, all of which are free of charge. These include an online seminar series, virtual roundtable meetings, and briefs offering plain language summaries of methods and evidence stemming from substance use research. Email us if you are interested in joining the Co/Lab CoP.

+ Why is Co/Lab needed?

BC has a long tradition of research on substance use, including patterns of use and harms, services and supports, costs to society, and policies on regulation, marketing and enforcement. This research has been essential for establishing healthy public policy that both promotes population health and reduces health inequities.

Today, we have a good sense of how policies that regulate access to alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs (through price, points of sale, hours of service) can affect our health. We know that substances are used for many reasons with both benefits and harms to health, with harms closely tied to heavier and more frequent use. We also know what works in services and supports for people who use substances. But we still have a lot to learn, made clear by the loosening of policies that regulate access to alcohol, the current public health emergency related to overdoses and the toxic illicit drug supply, the uneven impacts of COVID-19, and the many gaps in our health system that make access to services difficult, if not impossible, for people who use drugs.

The harms of substance use are not distributed randomly throughout the population: social and structural disadvantages make it more likely that someone will experience harms, as well as affecting whether policies, services and supports will be effective. Examples of social and structural disadvantages include poverty, homelessness, racialization, colonization, criminalization, sex and gender discrimination, and stigma. These are shaped by policies and they contribute to health inequities.

What is needed now is research that blends population-level monitoring and surveillance of substance use, harms, and costs, evaluations of services and supports, and studies of the impacts of social and structural disadvantages. We need to look at how to implement policies, services and supports so that they work properly in different communities, both to promote health and to reduce inequities. This is the core idea behind Co/Lab.

+ What will Co/Lab do?

Co/Lab will rely on a diverse array of research tools, including the collection of quantitative and qualitative data, analyses of administrative and Census data, rapid reviews, environmental scans, and more, to create evidence and move it into policy and practice to reduce the harms of substance use.

There are three main areas of activities to Co/Lab.

1) Equity-oriented monitoring and surveillance

2) Research on service innovations

3) Knowledge exchange

Click on each area of work to learn more.

+ What makes Co/Lab equity-oriented?

Co/Lab is equity-oriented through its commitment to the meaningful participation of people who use substances and their families in all phases of the project. This commitment to equity means that we will create opportunities for people with lived and living experience in planning, conducting and sharing the research. The commitment to participation is strengthened through further collaboration with a network of service providers, health planners, and policy makers. Through this network, stakeholders will have input into creating indicators for monitoring and surveillance that reflect the realities they are experiencing in their communities. They will have input into developing questions for research on service innovations and ways to share evidence to maximize impacts where they matter most.

+ How did Co/Lab get started?

Co/Lab represents the combination of several different research programs at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research (CISUR). For the past decade, scientists have worked in partnership with drug-user groups in BC and across Canada on research related to harm reduction, housing, and health equity. Two exemplar projects are the Collective Voices Effecting Change and the Equity Lens in Public Health (ELPH) project. Meanwhile, another line of research involved the creation of the BC Alcohol and Other Drug Monitoring Program, which involved monitoring and surveillance of regulatory policies, patterns of substance use, and related harms using large administrative health datasets and sales data on alcohol. This work led to the creation of the AOD Analyzer Tool, a free, publicly available tool for calculating rates of substance-related hospitalizations and mortality by region and local area in BC. Additional work has focused on services and supports for people who use substances, including harm reduction services, counselling and other forms of treatment. This work considers how services and supports are organized into a system of care and implemented in real-world settings, and how their impacts vary across populations depending on social and structural disadvantage. Exemplar projects include Reducing Stigma in Primary Care and the Canadian Managed Alcohol Program Study. Finally, CISUR researchers have developed tools and practices for knowledge exchange and the implementation of research evidence. This work has included approaches to community dialogue events and plain language bulletins for community stakeholders. All four of these lines of research are reflected in Co/Lab.

+ What is a community laboratory?

A community laboratory is a virtual collaborative that engages in community-based research. Members include stakeholders from all relevant groups, including community members, service providers, health planners, policy makers, and academic researchers. The work that is done by the community laboratory is geared toward answering questions that are important to the community. Members are committed not only to create evidence to answer these questions, but also to move that evidence into action in developing policies and services that will improve health and reduce inequities.

+ Who funds Co/Lab?

Co/Lab is supported by funding from Health Canada, through their Substance Use and Addictions Program.

+ Who is a part of Co/Lab?

The core Co/Lab research team is based at the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research (CISUR) at the University of Victoria. Partners include people who use substances, families, community service providers, and health planners and policy makers from health authorities and provincial government. Click here for a full list of project partners.