Ginetta Salvalaggio MD MSc is a Professor with the Department of Family Medicine and an Associate Scientific Director with the Inner City Health and Wellness Program, at the University of Alberta in western Canada. Her academic interests include social accountability, community engagement, and health services for urban underserved populations.

Background: People Who Use Drugs (PWUD) in Western Canada are facing multiple intersecting health threats, including disruption of pre-pandemic support systems, an increase in poisoning deaths, houselessness, and poor mental health. In this era of poly-crisis, PWUD voices need to be centered in setting priorities and co-creating systems of community care.

Methodology: Community-partnered research using 1) Sensemaker micro-narratives and 2) arts-based asset-mapping approaches. PWUD co-researchers enroll community participants, collect data, support participants in self-interpretation of their data, and contribute to subsequent data analysis and knowledge sharing. Team members have co-created the study protocol, emphasizing the community values of reciprocity, collective safety, community respect, and celebration of community strengths.

Results: 173 participants have shared stories with the research team. Emerging themes include 1) The importance of intersectionality-tailored housing supports informed by lived experience; 2) Love and collective care as a basis for safety in community; 3) Concerns about policing and decampments; and 4) Stigma in accessing health care and the challenge of responding to increasing psychosis. Participants have provided several “imagined future” ideas for formal system supports to address concerns and build on existing peer-based systems of care.

Conclusion: As a matter of equity and social justice, there is an urgent need for contextually relevant and locally adaptive, partnered responses to health threats facing PWUD. Community-partnered research is both feasible and uniquely able to elicit community priorities and ideas for community care.