ROE TO STUDY LIFE OF DRUG USERS

SFU anthropology graduate student Gordon Roe (below) will spend the next
several months watching life unfold in Vancouver's downtown eastside hotels
and alleys to find out how drug users involved in a unique project can help
each other stay safe.

Roe, who is currently writing his PhD dissertation, will use a $32,500
(U.S.) Soros Harm Reduction Fellowship from the U.S.-based Lindesmith Centre
to help a local drug user group carry out a peer outreach project. The
project is aimed at providing harm reduction services in high risk areas
which Roe says can't always be adequately served by traditional street
outreach programs.

Roe is working with the more than 400 members of the Vancouver Area Network
of Drug Users (VANDU). He joined the organization as a non-voting member
(voting members must be current or former drug users) and will work as a
partner with the group. Roe will collect social networking data and carry
out an analysis of the program that the peer workers will develop
themselves. It will mean temporarily moving into hotels and occasionally
walking the alleys with VANDU members after dark.

Roe says the results will help shed light on "the real needs of drug users,"
and, if the project is successful, could lead to the development of similar
programs in other inner cities.

"VANDU members will be organized into a structured network of local harm
reductionists," says Roe, noting that the organization, which receives
funding from the Vancouver-Richmond health board, has become a key element
in combating Vancouver's HIV epidemic. "They will be responsible for
carrying out this work. There is a sense of community among drug users,"
adds Roe. "They want to make this happen."

Roe has previously worked with needle exchange programs and has seen how
drug users live. He doesn't agree with much of the stereotype society places
on them. "I'm struck by how much they care," he says, "and by how angry they
are that they know what has to be done, but can't quite pull themselves
out."

Roe says his ethnographic approach to the project will provide a rare
opportunity to learn what drug users do to look after themselves and each
other - from their perspective.

Roe concedes user-based peer support is controversial. "The programs that
exist do a great job with drug users who access them," says Roe. "But for
those who don't use the services, the only way to change the risk behaviours
of the extremely service resistant users is to have them confronted by
someone like themselves," he believes.

There are some outreach workers on the streets after hours but no one has a
consistent, around the clock presence on every street or alley, adds Roe.
"They just can't be there all the time.

"Users are already there. The project is designed to take advantage of that,
as an excellent supplementary service. They can be where the biggest risks
are being taken."

Roe, who interviewed outreach workers while accompanying them on shifts over
the past year, says the project will complement existing services while
taking "a very different approach.

"The project will provide a cost effective and efficient way to extend the
work already being done by outreach groups into areas and at times that are
beyond their current ability to service," he concludes.