The first national clinical research priority setting study in the AOD sector in Australia was conducted to determine the focus of clinical research, seed funding, and training programs for The National Centre for Clinical Research on Emerging Drugs (NCCRED).
Alcohol is one of the leading risk factors for death and disability in young people 1. Although people usually first start drinking alcohol at around 15-16 years of age 2, this can vary, and adolescents often follow different patterns or “trajectories” of drinking. The age at which an adolescent first consumes alcohol and how quickly they escalate their alcohol use may be important predictors of alcohol-related problems in early adulthood.
Around one in two people who inject drugs (PWID) have been exposed to hepatitis C virus (HCV) and potentially 6 million PWID globally are chronically infected.
A relatively neglected source of day-to-day ill-health among people who inject drugs is bacterial infections of the skin and soft tissue (SSTIs). Usually when we talk about infections among people who inject drugs, we are talking about blood borne viral infections, such as HIV and hepatitis C. These are highly prevalent in people who inject drugs, and have huge impacts on people’s health. SSTIs, abscesses and cellulitis mostly, receive far less focus even though these are quite common.
Mental health harms have become synonymous with people who use methamphetamines. However, individual study results are often inconsistent. This this has made it difficult to draw firm conclusions about the risks.
