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Effectiveness bank home page. Opens new window Hot topic search results

You have found 119 entries after clicking the GO button or a search link in a hot topic. Sorted by the main topic addressed, the list shows in orange the type of entry, year the original document was published (or if one of our own documents, the year last updated), and the type of file you will download when you click on the title. In blue is the document’s title followed by a brief description.

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STUDY 2016 HTM file
Effectiveness of Scotland’s National Naloxone Programme for reducing opioid-related deaths: a before (2006–10) versus after (2011–13) comparison

In 2011 Scotland became the first country to fund a national policy of distributing the opiate-blocker naloxone to prevent deaths involving opiate-type drugs. According to this evaluation it did prevent deaths where the effect was most likely to be seen – in the weeks after release from prison.

HOT TOPIC 2017 HTM file
Overdose antidote naloxone takes harm-reduction centre stage

‘Hot topics’ offer background and analysis on important issues which sometimes generate heated debate. National programmes distributing the opiate overdose antidote naloxone have become the great hope for curbing the rise in overdose deaths, but England is lagging behind the rest of the UK – and planning for the likelihood not of recovery but relapse may for some services and patients be hard to accept.

REVIEW 2016 HTM file
Are take-home naloxone programmes effective? Systematic review utilizing application of the Bradford Hill criteria

How confident can we be that take-home naloxone programmes are effective without the ‘gold standard’ randomised trial? Judged against nine criteria for establishing the presumption of causality, evidence that the provision of naloxone reduces overdose-related deaths among opioid users.

STUDY 2018 HTM file
“Once I’d done it once it was like writing your name”: Lived experience of take-home naloxone administration by people who inject drugs

Important implications for overdose prevention policy and practice in Scotland and the UK from this qualitative study which provides the first detailed insights into how people who inject drugs experience administering naloxone rescue kits.

STUDY 2019 HTM file
Modelling the combined impact of interventions in averting deaths during a synthetic-opioid overdose epidemic

In the Canadian province of British Columbia there was a rapid rise in overdose deaths from 2015, leading to the declaration of a public health emergency in 2016. The response rested on three key interventions: take-home naloxone, opioid substitution therapy, and drug consumption rooms. The province’s highly detailed surveillance data offered an opportunity to estimate their collective and individual impacts on opioid overdose deaths.

STUDY 2019 HTM file
One opioid user saving another: the first study of an opioid overdose-reversal and naloxone distribution program addressing hard-to-reach drug scenes in Denmark

A Danish programme targeted potential bystanders of opioid overdoses, providing training and supplies of the ‘overdose antidote’ naloxone. People who use opioids were the most likely to intervene in an overdose situation, highlighting their positive role as “public health collaborators”.

STUDY 1999 PDF file 250Kb
Innovative brief intervention could help stop drug users starting to inject

British study found that an hour-long information and training session helped prevent injectors initiating other drug users into the practice, intercepting progression to the most dangerous form of drug use.

IN PRACTICE 2004 PDF file 418Kb
Giving the silent majority a voice

Constrained by guidelines and standards, a UK prescribing service could do little to respond to user survey feedback.

STUDY 2002 PDF file 183Kb
No harm and some benefit in letting methadone patients choose their dose

US study shows that methadone maintenance patients allowed to set their own doses do not escalate excessively. Benefits may include improved patient-therapist relations and reduced illicit drug use. Extended text reviews other relevant studies.

STUDY 2004 PDF file 106Kb
Methadone programme loosens up, increases capacity, patients do just as well

Canadian study documents what happens when you 'deregulate' methadone prescribing and permit greater patient choice in treatment and treatment goals. Result: room for more patients, less conflict and no decrease in effectiveness.


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