“We just don’t have the space for it”: Geographies of survival and spatial triage in overdose prevention sites

Health geographies III – Landscapes of care

“…Giesbrecht et al (2018) similarly explore how power relations expressed and enabled though the characteristics of formal care settings shape experiences of and access to palliative care, reinforcing structural vulnerability and inequities in access to care for people who are homeless or struggle with substances. Olding et al’s (2023) ethnographic study of overdose prevention clinics in Vancouver shows how sites have multiple meanings and uses for different users, some of whom see these as sites as also being for mutual aid, sheltering, or income generation through selling drugs, leading to conflicts and sometimes unintended outcomes when care providers try to prioritize how such spaces should be used. Ivanova et al (2020) considered case study of an illegal baby foundling room in the Netherlands, where one may abandon one’s infant anonymously, extends these ideas about the complex relationships between care and place or ‘placed care’, and the politically delicate ways these operate from the level of individual emotions to governmental practices.…”