CATIE Blog

Supporting infant feeding by parents living with HIV in Canada

Jordan Coulombe — Tue, 08 Sep 2026 16:55:12 +0000

For parents living with HIV, the decision about whether to breast/chest feed can be difficult, and it can be even more challenging if a family surveillance system is involved. In this blog post, we discuss family surveillance and the current guidelines on breast/chest feeding and HIV, and we offer practical steps that community and healthcare workers can take to provide families with compassionate, evidence-based support that honours and uplifts parental autonomy. Family surveillance, sometimes referred to as family policing, refers to systems that are often framed as child protection or child welfare but can monitor families in ways that impact...

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When evidence, economic arguments and the law aren’t enough: Responding to political attacks on harm reduction

Jordan Coulombe — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:17:00 +0000

Across Canada, harm reduction is under attack. Innovative and evidence-informed programs have been cut, reversed and shuttered. Politicians are retreating from progressive drug policies. Where Canadians were once global leaders in harm reduction, now governments at all levels are retreating from harm reduction principles and practices. The contrast with where Canada once was and current Canadian drug policy is striking. Harm reduction advocates and their allies are fighting back. They are producing evidence briefs about health benefits and preventable deaths, making arguments about costs and launching legal challenges. But these efforts have not been enough to prevent shutting down harm...

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Harm reduction persists: Returning to collective care

Jordan Coulombe — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:17:00 +0000

For more than a decade, communities across Canada have been experiencing tremendous harms associated with the growing toxicity of the unregulated drug supply. Responses to this crisis remain fragmented, and too often they are shaped more by politics than by evidence or need. In recent years, the already limited landscape of harm reduction services has contracted further as governments across Canada have cut funding and reduced support. However, harm reduction did not begin as government-funded policies or programs. It began as collective care. Roots of harm reduction Harm reduction in Canada originated in approaches built by people who use drugs...

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What do we owe people? Ethics and the rollback of harm reduction programs in Canada

Jordan Coulombe — Mon, 17 Aug 2026 12:17:00 +0000

Canada is facing a drug policy contradiction. Governments continue to describe toxic drug deaths as a “serious public health crisis”, yet some are dismantling parts of the public health response designed to prevent overdoses, reduce infections and connect people to treatment and social supports. Public debate often asks whether programs such as supervised consumptions services (SCS) and safer supply should have been implemented in the first place. That question matters. But once these programs exist and you take them away, another ethics question arises: what do governments owe people who have come to depend on these programs for survival? Ending...

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National numbers don’t tell the whole story: Nova Scotia’s overdose deaths are rising

Jordan Coulombe — Thu, 16 Jul 2026 15:01:04 +0000

In 2024, the number of opioid-related deaths in Canada dropped by 17% compared with the previous year. Some factors contributing to the decline include changes in the unregulated toxic drug supply, naloxone availability and a decrease in the size of the population at risk of overdose. However, it’s crucial to recognize that although this national figure is encouraging, too many lives are still being lost. The number of opioid-related deaths remains extremely high compared with the period before synthetic opioids became widespread in the drug supply. These synthetic opioids include fentanyl and nitazenes, which are often mixed with synthetic benzodiazepines....

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What does it take to eliminate hepatitis C in a city like Montreal?

Jordan Coulombe — Mon, 25 May 2026 17:37:46 +0000

What would it take for Montreal to eliminate hepatitis C? The short answer: sustained, collective effort. The reality is that hepatitis C is both preventable and curable, but it continues to affect communities across Montreal. These communities are often those facing the greatest barriers to care. While hepatitis C treatment can be simple, eliminating the virus at a population level is a challenge. It tests how effective health systems can work across sectors and reach those often left behind by traditional systems of care. The Métropoles sans Hépatite C (MSHC) project was created with an ambitious goal: to make Montreal the first city in North...

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Scaling back harm reduction will scale up blood-borne infections

Jordan Coulombe — Mon, 25 May 2026 17:22:23 +0000

Following nearly a decade of leadership in responding to the toxic drug crisis, harm reduction programs in some parts of Canada are now being scaled back. In some communities, programs like supervised consumption services and safer drug use equipment distribution are being defunded, restricted or forced to close. This is despite strong evidence that supervised consumption services prevent overdose deaths, increase safer substance use practices, increase access to healthcare including treatment and mental health services and reduce public drug use. Safer drug use distribution programs, often referred to as needle and syringe programs, prevent viral infections like hepatitis C and...

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Behind the science: Understanding Canada’s new hepatitis B guidelines

Jordan Coulombe — Mon, 25 May 2026 17:14:30 +0000

Hepatitis B is a liver infection caused by the hepatitis B virus. Without proper care, hepatitis B can lead to serious health problems like liver failure, liver cancer and early death. In 2025, the Canadian Association for the Study of the Liver (CASL) and the Association of Medical Microbiology and Infectious Disease Canada (AMMI) released new guidelines for the management of chronic hepatitis B. Madison Kennedy, CATIE’s knowledge specialist in hepatitis, spoke with Dr. Hin Hin Ko, Clinical Professor of Medicine at University of British Columbia and member of the chronic hepatitis B guideline committee, to understand how these guidelines...

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Understanding the realities of PnP with the Chemstory/Chemstories podcast

Jordan Coulombe — Wed, 01 Apr 2026 09:07:59 +0000

PnP (for “party ’n play,” also called chemsex) is defined as the intentional use of psychoactive substances, such as methamphetamine, GHB or ketamine, in a sexual context. Because of the strong stigma surrounding the practice, people still too often experience this in silence, shame and isolation. It’s precisely to address this issue that researcher and professor Olivier Ferlatte, director of Qollab, a research laboratory located at the University of Montreal’s School of Public Health (ESPUM), designed and conceived the Chemstory/Chemstories research-action project. The project aims to hand the mic to the people directly concerned, meaning gay, bisexual and queer men, both...

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From safety to belonging: The essential elements of gender-responsive harm reduction

Jordan Coulombe — Mon, 02 Mar 2026 14:16:10 +0000

As the toxic drug crisis continues to devastate communities across Canada, available supports are dwindling. In Ontario, many supervised injection services (SIS) have been shuttered by regressive and dangerous government policies. This attack on evidence-based care limits opportunities to expand and diversify harm reduction services, which is especially harmful to women, trans and non-binary people who use drugs (WTNB-PWUD) as their gender-specific needs are already often overlooked in harm reduction services. Only a small number of SIS have provided dedicated spaces for WTNB-PWUD. Looking more closely at the lessons learned from these effective models can help inform where the harm...

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