Perrine Roux is a public health researcher with over twenty years of experience in the fields of HIV, Hepatitis C, and harm reduction. She is the PI of several mixed-method, multidisciplinary projects related to access to care and prevention for PWUD and has over 80 publications in this field.

Context: Drug checking (DC) is a harm reduction (HR) service available in many countries. In France, DC services are proposed in HR programs in several contexts, using various techniques and either in-person or remotely. While several studies have suggested good acceptability of DC by people who use drugs (PWUD), it is not clear which individual and structural factors influence its use.
Methods: “Checknow” is an ongoing e-cohort study conducted in France among PWUD to study DC effectiveness on PWUD health and empowerment. For this analysis, we used baseline data to study DC use. We built a three-category outcome: (i) no use ever, (ii) in-person use, and (iii) remote use. A multinomial logistic model was used to identify factors associated with DC use, using the in-person DC category as the reference.
Results: Of the 821 participants, 63.2% reported never using DC, 23.8% had used it in-person, and 13.0% remotely. Compared with PWUD using in-person DC, those who never used DC were less likely to be older PWUD (aOR:0.67; 95%CI[0.47;0.98]) and living in urban areas (versus rural) (0.68; [0.47;0.98]). Compared with the in-person DC group, those using remote DC were more likely to be older (2.60 [1.56;4.32]). However, those living in urban areas (0.54; [0.32;0.93]) were less likely to use DC remotely compared with the in-person DC users.
Conclusions: In a context where DC services are increasingly present in France, over one-third of our participants reported using them. When comparing in-person DC services to no DC use, younger PWUD seem to have less access to DC services. Remote DC would appear to be advantageous for older PWUD and those who live in rural settings with no nearby HR programs. Our findings highlight the importance of informing PWUD about the existence of DC, and of adapting DC services according to sociodemographic profiles.