Introduction

The opioid crisis continues to affect thousands of people in Canada each year. Between January 2016 and June 2020, there were more than 17,000 apparent opioid-related deaths, with the highest number in one period being 1,628 deaths recorded between April and June 2020.1 While previous data suggested a decrease in opioid-related deaths from 2018 to 2019, recent data shows that deaths are increasing once again in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to opioid-related deaths, there were over 21,000 opioid poisoning-related hospitalizations in Canada between January 2016 and June 2020.2 This number illustrates just a fraction of the interactions that people who use opioids have had with health-care providers (HCPs) and first responders (FRs). What we don’t see from this number is the many day-to-day interactions that happen, whether for treatment or other reasons.

Program Description

This program is an in-person workshop that aims to reduce substance use-related stigma through education on addiction, the effects of stigmatizing behaviours and language, and the importance of compassion.

During the workshops, experts review evidence and experiences of stigma. Participants are encouraged to recognize stigma in their own lives and are challenged to change how they think about substance use and addiction. Core elements of the workshop include :

• education on the neuroscience of addiction
• education about stigma and the use of stigmatizing language
• messages and personal stories from people with lived experience of substance use, delivered inperson and through videos
• messaging around the importance of compassion, the use of person-first language and approaches, and a focus on wellness as a paradigm for recovery (e.g., as opposed to abstinence-only approaches and understanding)
• action planning and group activities on what participants can do to help reduce stigma in their organizations and personally.

Summary and Conclusions

Overall, the evaluation of the workshop showed encouraging and promising results. This was evidenced by a number of findings:

• Statistically significant improvements were observed on the OM-PATOS as well as the adapted measure examining attitudes and behavioural intentions toward people substance use problems more generally, with effect sizes in the small (OM-PATOS) to medium (adapted measure) range.
• A notable increase in the proportion of participants across the 80% threshold of success was observed, from under half to nearly two-thirds of participants.
• All (100%) of the program participants at post-test agreed or strongly agreed that since taking the workshop they were committed to using person-first language when speaking about people with substance use problems, indicating that participants left the program with a strong action-oriented stigma reduction commitment.
• High levels of agreement from participants about perceived program impacts were observed.
• Qualitative open-ended feedback from participants was strongly positive.