Association between neighbourhood socioeconomic characteristics and high-risk injection behaviour amongst injection drug users living in inner and other city areas in Montréal, Canada

Residential Trajectory and HIV High-Risk Behaviors among Montréal Street Youth—A Reciprocal Relationship

“…16 Many studies of vulnerable individuals such as injection drug users and the homeless have shown that these factors have a significant influence on their health since they shape daily risk taking. 17,18 In this perspective, housing has been identified as a major determinant that could both directly and indirectly fashion an individual's physical and mental health through his or her involvement in high-risk behaviors. 19,20 From the wide spectrum of possible residential status, homelessness, the most severe form of precarious housing status, has received considerable attention, particularly in the literature on HIV risk behaviors.…”

‘The biggest mistake God ever made was to create junkies’: Unsafe injection practices, health care discrimination and overdose deaths in Montreal, Canada

“…The current study was conducted in the city of Montreal, which has a land base of 500 km 2 and a population of 1.8 million residents (Genereux, Bruneau & Daniel, 2010). The Island of Montreal is the largest city in the province of Quebec and the second largest city in Canada (de Bibiana et al, 2011).…”

“…Montreal is divided into 27 boroughs; the Ville-Marie borough and the Sainte-Marie 22 neighbourhood are the most active injection drug use areas in the city. It is not surprising that these areas also have the highest levels of socioeconomic disadvantage and crime (Genereux et al, 2010;Montigny, Moudon, Leigh, & Kim, 2011). A 2001 study estimated Montreal's IDU population to be between 4,300 and 12,500 individuals (Archibald et al, 2001;Green et al, 2004).…”

Drug-related risks among street youth in two neighborhoods in a Canadian setting

“…This process of normalization could in turn lead to increased uptake of injection drug use and higher levels of street entrenchment among youth residing in both areas (in spite of the fact that open injection drug use is far less prevalent in the DTS than in the DTES) (29). This concern is informed by research investigating the association between neighborhood-level influences and drug-related health risks (14, 16, 24, 30, 31). In particular, a large body of literature has demonstrated that the built environment affects the range of choices available to vulnerable populations such as street-involved youth (32–36), particularly when considered within the context of the confluence of other social, structural, and policy factors within a broader risk environment (2, 37).…”