Evaluating methamphetamine use and risks of injection initiation among street youth the ARYS study.docVIP

Harm Reduction Journal BioMedCentral Research Open Access Evaluating methamphetamine use and risks of injection initiation among street youth: the ARYS study Evan Wood*1,2, Jo-Anne Stoltz1, Julio SG Montaner1,2 and Thomas Kerr1,2 Address: 1British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS, St. Pauls Hospital, 608 - 1081 Burrard Street, Vancouver BC V6Z 1Y6, Canada and 2Department of Medicine, University of British Columbia, 3300 - 950 West 10th Avenue, Vancouver BC V5Z 4E3, Canada Email: Evan Wood* - ewood@cfenet.ubc.ca; Jo-Anne Stoltz - jstoltz@cfenet.ubc.ca; Julio SG Montaner - jmontaner@cfenet.ubc.ca; Thomas Kerr - tkerr@cfenet.ubc.ca * Corresponding author Published: 24 May 2006 Received: 23 March 2006 Accepted: 24 May 2006 Harm Reduction Journal 2006, 3:18 doi:10.1186/1477-7517-3-18 This article is available from: /content/3/1/18 ? 2006 Wood et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (/licenses/by/2.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. Abstract Many Canadian cities are experiencing ongoing infectious disease and overdose epidemics among injection drug users (IDU). These health concerns have recently been exacerbated by the increasing availability and use of methamphetamine. The challenges of reducing health-related harms among IDU have led to an increased recognition that strategies to prevent initiation into injection drug use must receive renewed focus. In an effort to better explore the factors that may protect against or facilitate entry into injection drug use, the At Risk Youth Study (ARYS) has recently been initiated in Vancouver, Canada. The local setting is unique due to the significant infrastructure that has been put in place to reduce HIV transmission among active IDU. The ARYS study will seek t