Assessing COVID-19 pandemic impacts on the health of PWID using a novel data sharing model.

Abstract

Using an innovative data sharing model, we assessed the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the health of people who inject drugs (PWID). The PWID Data Collaborative was established in 2021 to promote data sharing across PWID studies in North America. Contributing studies submitted aggregate data on 23 standardized indicators during four time periods: pre-pandemic (Mar 2019 - Feb 2020), early-pandemic (Mar 2020 - Feb 2021), mid-pandemic (Mar 2021 - Feb 2022), and late pandemic (Mar 2022 - Feb 2023). We present study-specific and meta-analyzed estimates for the percentage of PWID who took medications for opioid use disorder, received substance use treatment, shared syringes or injection equipment, had a mental health condition, had been incarcerated, or had experienced houselessness. To examine change over time across indicators, we fit a random effects meta-regression model to prevalence estimates using time as a moderator. Thirteen studies contributed estimates to the Data Collaborative on these indicators, representing 6,213 PWID interviews. We observed minimal change across prevalence of the six indicators between the pre-pandemic (March 2019 - February 2020) and three subsequent time periods, overall or within individual studies. Considerable heterogeneity was observed across study- and time-specific estimates. Limited pandemic-related change observed in indicators of PWID health is likely a result of policy and supportive service-related changes and may also reflect resilience among service providers and PWID themselves. The Data Collaborative is an unprecedented data sharing model with potential to greatly improve the quality and timeliness of data on the health of PWID.