Adrian Guta
Biographic Data
| ID | 214813 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Adrian Guta |
| GIVEN NAMES | Adrian |
| FAMILY NAME | Guta |
| SIGNATURE | GUTA A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Windsor |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1380-2016 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 66 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 237 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 66 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2007 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 8 |
Reduced risk of overdose among clients of a safer opioid supply program in Southwestern Ontario
Participants in a SOS program experienced significant reductions in non-fatal overdose during the 6 months following program initiation. SOS clients are a high-risk population with elevated overdose rates at baseline; these results support expanding safer supply programs as part of a comprehensive set of strategies to address the overdose crisis
Covid-19 Vaccine Hesitancy and Under-Vaccination among Marginalized Populations in the United States and Canada
Navigating fragmented services
Findings illuminate critical public health challenges as women navigate fragmented services across multiple and siloed systems not designed to meet their complex needs. There is an urgent need for systemic change to create more integrated, responsive support systems for women experiencing GBV. This includes addressing underlying structures perpetuating gender inequities and violence. Facilitating safe access to holistic services that consider wom…
Perspectives on prescribed safer supply programs among people who inject drugs in Baltimore, Maryland
This study suggests strong acceptability of prescribed safer supply to address the U.S. opioid crisis, including overdose, violence, and associated healthcare costs. We recommend further U.S. research and pilot projects
Representations of Safer Opioid Supply Programs in Ontario Media Sources From 2021 to 2022
Toxic drug poisoning has claimed 53,821 lives since 2016 in Canada. After years of advocacy by people who use drugs and their supporters, the Canadian government funded a series of safer opioid supply (SOS) programs, where individuals who use unregulated opioids receive prescribed pharmaceutical opioids to minimize overdose risk. Twenty-six programs have been implemented in Canada since 2020, with media capturing varying positions on their implem…
Gendered Experiences of Ontological Insecurity Among Women Who Use Drugs and Experience Housing Insecurity
Introduction: Research has established that experiences of substance use and housing insecurity leads to violence, alienation, and health deterioration for women. However, no literature has assessed how the gendered nature of substance use and housing insecurity influence the ontological insecurity of women. This paper examines the relationship between ontological insecurity, substance use, and housing insecurity for women. We provide considerati…
We like to be in the tent
Analysis of hospital-based healthcare provision for people living with HIV who use drugs in Ontario, Canada
People living with HIV (PLWH) who use drugs are hospitalized at higher rates than the general population and report receiving poor care during hospitalization. The patient experience of PLWH during hospitalization is influenced by the clinical practice of healthcare providers (HPs). However, there is a gap in the literature that articulates the perspectives of HPs who deliver care to this population. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with…
Diverting attention away from novel approaches to preventing opioid overdose deaths
“I get the referral because nobody else wants to work with this person”
Borderline personality disorder (BPD) is a mental health condition characterized by unstable relationships, self-image, and emotions, as well as impulsive behaviors and high rates of morbidity and mortality. Provider-based stigmatization of individuals with BPD is associated with poor health outcomes and increased mortality risk. However, little is known about social workers' experiences in providing care to people living with BPD (PLBPD). This s…
Mapping a moral panic
The ongoing overdose and drug toxicity crisis in North America has contributed momentum to the emergence of safer supply prescribing and programs in Canada as a means of providing an alternative to the highly volatile unregulated drug supply. The implementation and scale-up of safer supply have been met with a vocal reaction on the part of news media commentators, conservative politicians, recovery industry representatives, and some prominent add…
Co-designing an Outreach Intervention for Women Experiencing Street-Involvement and Gender-Based Violence
Outreach is an important approach to improve health and social care for women experiencing street involvement (SI) or gender-based violence (GBV). Few studies have examined outreach approaches that incorporate SI and GBV. Drawing on feminist theories and principles of community-based research, we detail an inclusive co-design approach for an outreach intervention considering these interrelated contexts. Women with lived experience, researchers, a…
Criminal Code reform of HIV non-disclosure is urgently needed
Safer Opioid Supply programs
Our findings suggest that the combination of safer supply, wrap-around support, and harm reduction within primary care settings can lead to increased healthcare engagement, HIV/HCV prevention, testing, and treatment uptake, reducing the burden of infectious diseases and overdose risk. SSPs have the potential to meaningfully reduce overdose rates, address the ongoing overdose crisis, and if scaled up, influence population-level outcomes
Policing harm reduction
The debate over whether or not to have police officers carry naloxone was waged long enough in Windsor, Ontario that it became referred to in the local media as “the naloxone issue.” Compared to other cities and towns in the Canadian province, Windsor was slow to equip police officers with the life-saving drug that reverses the effects of opioid overdose. In this paper, we document the unhurried development of this particular harm reduction measu…
‘I don't chase drugs as much anymore, and I'm not dead’
“Food engages people, as we know”
Food insecurity is widely documented among people living with HIV (PLWH) worldwide, and it presents significant challenges across the spectrum of HIV care and support. In North America, the prevalence of food insecurity among PLWH exceeds 50%. In the province of British Columbia (BC), it exceeds 65%. It comes as no surprise that food has become an essential tool in supporting and engaging with PLWH. Over the past decade, however, a shift has take…
I will play this tokenistic game, I just want something useful for my community’
Hiring peer researchers – individuals with lived experience of the phenomenon under study – is an increasingly popular practice. However, little research has examined experiences of peer research from the perspectives of peer researchers themselves. In this paper, we report on data from a participatory, qualitative research project focused on four intersecting communities often engaged in peer research: mental health service user/consumer/survivo…
Challenges of implementing safer supply programs in Canada during the Covid-19 pandemic
Safer supply pilot programs in Canada face multiple inner and outer implementation challenges. Given the potential role of safer supply programs in addressing the drug toxicity crisis in Canada and the possibility of future scale-up, services should be well-supported during their implementation phases. Refining service provision within safer supply programs based on the feedback and experiences of clients and program administrators is warranted, …
Spotting as a risk mitigation method
Discursive positions on charitable sector advocacy in Canada
Canadian charities have a history of advocating for social and policy change. With the 1985 Income Tax Act, charities became restricted to using up to 10% of their resources toward nonpartisan political activities. They subsequently underwent an audit initiated by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2012. The legal climate changed again when the 10% rule was dropped in 2018, enabling charities to pursue political activities with no predefined limit.…
And if my goal is never to leave Casey House?”
Therapeutic alignments
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Policing and Society on 28 Sep 2023, available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/10439463.2023.2263616
The Box Has Become an Indispensable Part of My Life”
Community-based models of cannabis cultivation, distribution, and consumption—such as cannabis clubs—have been documented across Europe, North America, South America, and New Zealand since the 1990s. For the most part, these models have a history of operating outside existing legislation and regulations. Jurisdictions that have legalized cannabis have approached community-based models in opposite ways (eliminate vs. regulate). Canada legalizing c…
Between Care and Control
As harm reduction programs and services proliferate, people who use drugs (PWUD) are increasingly subjected to surveillance through the collection of their personal information, systematic observation, and other means. The data generated from these practices are frequently repurposed across various institutional sites for clinical, evaluative, epidemiological, and administrative uses. Rationales provided for increased surveillance include the mor…
Ethical Dilemmas in Community-Based Participatory Research
Ethical Considerations for Qualitative Research Methods During the Covid-19 Pandemic and Other Emergency Situations
Qualitative research is integral to the pandemic response. Qualitative methods are ideally suited to generating evidence to inform tailored, culturally appropriate approaches to COVID-19, and to meaningfully engaging diverse individuals and communities in response to the pandemic. In this paper, we discuss core ethical and methodological considerations in the design and implementation of qualitative research in the COVID-19 era, and in pivoting t…
Resisting the seduction of “ethics creep”
In this paper we examine "ethics creep", a concept developed by Haggerty (2004) to account for the increasing bureaucratization of research ethics boards and institutional review boards (REB/IRBs) and the expanding reach of ethics review. We start with an overview of the recent surge of academic interest in ethics creep and similar arguments about the prohibitive effect of ethics review. We then introduce elements of Michel Foucault's theoretical…
Research Done in “A Good Way”
Objectives. We examined the role that Indigenous Elders can play in ensuring that community-based research (CBR) is conducted ethically. Methods. We present data from a larger qualitative study exploring ethical issues that occur in HIV-related CBR through the experiences of researchers engaged in CBR. Between May 2010 and July 2011, we interviewed 51 academic and community research team leaders of federally funded HIV CBR studies. We used themat…
Governing through community-based research
The "general public" and specific "communities" are increasingly being integrated into scientific decision-making. This shift emphasizes "scientific citizenship" and collaboration between interdisciplinary scientists, lay people, and multi-sector stakeholders (universities, healthcare, and government). The objective of this paper is to problematize these developments through a theoretically informed reading of empirical data that describes the co…
Visualizing harm reduction
The Political Economy of Peer Research
Participatory research, or the practice of involving ‘peers’ with lived experience, has become popular in social work. Peer engagement is lauded for: ‘democratising’ the research process; providing ‘capacity building’ and facilitating opportunities to co-produce knowledge. Yet, these claims are rarely evaluated by empirical investigations into the socio-material work conditions of peer researchers. Here we present findings of a study that examine…
Between Care and Control
As harm reduction programs and services proliferate, people who use drugs (PWUD) are increasingly subjected to surveillance through the collection of their personal information, systematic observation, and other means. The data generated from these practices are frequently repurposed across various institutional sites for clinical, evaluative, epidemiological, and administrative uses. Rationales provided for increased surveillance include the mor…
HIV, Viral Suppression and New Technologies of Surveillance and Control
The global response to managing the spread of HIV has recently undergone a significant shift with the advent of 'treatment as prevention', a strategy which presumes that scaling-up testing and treatment for people living with HIV will produce a broader preventative benefit. Treatment as prevention includes an array of diagnostic, technological and policy developments that are creating new understandings of how HIV circulates in bodies and spaces.…
How social policies shape the health and well-being of sexual- and gender-minority youth
Strategies and Challenges in Preventing Violence Against Canadian Indoor Sex Workers
Objectives. To examine indoor sex workers’ strategies in preventing workplace violence and influential socio-structural conditions. Methods. Data included qualitative interviews with 85 sex workers in British Columbia, Canada, from 2014 through 2016. For analyses, we used interpretive thematic techniques informed by World Health Organization position statements on violence. Results. Robbery, nonpayment, financial exploitation, and privacy violati…
Walking along beside the Researcher”
Research ethics boards and institutional review boards (REBs/IRBs) have been criticized for relying on conceptions of research that privilege biomedical, clinical, and experimental designs, and for penalizing research that deviates from this model. Studies that use a community-based participatory research (CBPR) design have been identified as particularly challenging to navigate through existing ethics review frameworks. However, the voices of RE…
Criminal Code reform of HIV non-disclosure is urgently needed
Safer Opioid Supply programs
Our findings suggest that the combination of safer supply, wrap-around support, and harm reduction within primary care settings can lead to increased healthcare engagement, HIV/HCV prevention, testing, and treatment uptake, reducing the burden of infectious diseases and overdose risk. SSPs have the potential to meaningfully reduce overdose rates, address the ongoing overdose crisis, and if scaled up, influence population-level outcomes
Gendered Experiences of Ontological Insecurity Among Women Who Use Drugs and Experience Housing Insecurity
Introduction: Research has established that experiences of substance use and housing insecurity leads to violence, alienation, and health deterioration for women. However, no literature has assessed how the gendered nature of substance use and housing insecurity influence the ontological insecurity of women. This paper examines the relationship between ontological insecurity, substance use, and housing insecurity for women. We provide considerati…
Therapeutic alignments
This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in Policing and Society on 28 Sep 2023, available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/10439463.2023.2263616
The Box Has Become an Indispensable Part of My Life”
Community-based models of cannabis cultivation, distribution, and consumption—such as cannabis clubs—have been documented across Europe, North America, South America, and New Zealand since the 1990s. For the most part, these models have a history of operating outside existing legislation and regulations. Jurisdictions that have legalized cannabis have approached community-based models in opposite ways (eliminate vs. regulate). Canada legalizing c…
Distribution of Harm Reduction Kits in a Specialty HIV Hospital
Casey House, a small Toronto, Ontario, hospital for people living with HIV, implemented a harm-reduction kit distribution program in October 2014 to decrease harms from reuse of injection and smoking equipment among its clients—inpatients and outpatients. Program statistics (November 2014–June 2017) show an increase in the number of kits—injection and smoking—distributed each year. The program is perceived by staff to communicate openness and inc…
Discursive positions on charitable sector advocacy in Canada
Canadian charities have a history of advocating for social and policy change. With the 1985 Income Tax Act, charities became restricted to using up to 10% of their resources toward nonpartisan political activities. They subsequently underwent an audit initiated by Prime Minister Stephen Harper in 2012. The legal climate changed again when the 10% rule was dropped in 2018, enabling charities to pursue political activities with no predefined limit.…
Intersections of Treatment, Surveillance, and Criminal Law Responses to HIV and Covid-19
Intersections of Treatment, Surveillance, and Criminal Law Responses to HIV and COVID-19 Colin Hastings PhD, Alexander McClelland PhD, Adrian Guta PhD, MSW, Maureen Owino MES, Eli Manning PhD, MSW, Michael Orsini PhD, Richard Elliott LLM, Marilou Gagnon PhD, RN, and Stephen Molldrem PhD Affiliation Colin Hastings is with the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Concordia University, Montreal, QC. Alexander McClelland is with the Institute of…
Do Mock-Ups, Presentations of Evidence, and Q&as Help Participants Voice Their Opinions during Focus Groups and Interviews About Supervised Injection Services
Controversial facilities (e.g., supervised injection services (SIS), methadone clinics, and social housing) may require feasibility studies that asses their acceptability among community stakeholders before their implementation. However, controversies about these facilities may make stakeholders ambivalent or hesitant to express opinions about them because various sources of information disagree about their harms and benefits. We responded to thi…
Ethical Dilemmas in Community-Based Participatory Research
Ethical Approaches to Adolescent Participation in Sexual Health Research
Community-based research in Aids-service organizations
BACKGROUND: Community-based research (CBR) approaches have become commonplace in many North American HIV communities. In many large urban centers, AIDS-service organizations (ASOs) have become active research hubs, advocating for research dollars in community settings. While ASOs have historically integrated local knowledge into their prevention, care and advocacy initiatives, many are now initiating or collaborating in research which addresses e…
Are We Asking the Right Questions? A Review of Canadian REB Practices in Relation to Community-Based Participatory Research
Access barriers to effective ethics review continue to be a significant challenge for researchers and community-based organizations undertaking community-based participatory research (CBPR). This article reports on findings from a content analysis of select (Behavioural, Biomedical, Social Sciences, Humanities) research ethics boards (REBs) in the Canadian research context (n = 86). Existing ethics review documentation was evaluated using 30 CBPR…
Faces and Words after 9/11
Words We Have Learned Since 9/11 By Clayton Campbell International Center for Contemporary Art Bucharest, Romania June 15-July 7, 2012 Clayton Campbell's Words We Have Learned Since 9/11 is among his most important in forty years of work based in photography. We could consider this project as a continuum. Its conceptual bases were established in 2003 and it has developed in mo phases: the first one focused on Words My Son Has Learned Since 9-1l (…
Mapping HIV community viral load
HIV plasma viral load testing has become more than just a clinical tool to monitor treatment response at the individual level. Increasingly, individual HIV plasma viral load testing is being reported to public health agencies and is used to inform epidemiological surveillance and monitor the presence of the virus collectively using techniques to measure 'community viral load'. This article seeks to formulate a critique and propose a novel way of …
Walking along beside the Researcher”
Research ethics boards and institutional review boards (REBs/IRBs) have been criticized for relying on conceptions of research that privilege biomedical, clinical, and experimental designs, and for penalizing research that deviates from this model. Studies that use a community-based participatory research (CBPR) design have been identified as particularly challenging to navigate through existing ethics review frameworks. However, the voices of RE…
Resisting the seduction of “ethics creep”
In this paper we examine "ethics creep", a concept developed by Haggerty (2004) to account for the increasing bureaucratization of research ethics boards and institutional review boards (REB/IRBs) and the expanding reach of ethics review. We start with an overview of the recent surge of academic interest in ethics creep and similar arguments about the prohibitive effect of ethics review. We then introduce elements of Michel Foucault's theoretical…
Governing through community allegiance
The disappointing results of many public health interventions have been attributed in part to the lack of meaningful community engagement in the planning, implementation, and evaluation of these initiatives. Community-based participatory research (CBPR) has emerged as an alternative research paradigm that directly involves community members in all aspects of the research process. Their involvement is often said to be an empowering experience that…
Governing through community-based research
The "general public" and specific "communities" are increasingly being integrated into scientific decision-making. This shift emphasizes "scientific citizenship" and collaboration between interdisciplinary scientists, lay people, and multi-sector stakeholders (universities, healthcare, and government). The objective of this paper is to problematize these developments through a theoretically informed reading of empirical data that describes the co…
Research Done in “A Good Way”
Objectives. We examined the role that Indigenous Elders can play in ensuring that community-based research (CBR) is conducted ethically. Methods. We present data from a larger qualitative study exploring ethical issues that occur in HIV-related CBR through the experiences of researchers engaged in CBR. Between May 2010 and July 2011, we interviewed 51 academic and community research team leaders of federally funded HIV CBR studies. We used themat…
Visualizing harm reduction
HIV, Viral Suppression and New Technologies of Surveillance and Control
The global response to managing the spread of HIV has recently undergone a significant shift with the advent of 'treatment as prevention', a strategy which presumes that scaling-up testing and treatment for people living with HIV will produce a broader preventative benefit. Treatment as prevention includes an array of diagnostic, technological and policy developments that are creating new understandings of how HIV circulates in bodies and spaces.…
The ethics of researching intimate partner violence in global health
There has been an increase in attention to intimate partner violence (IPV) as a health issue that contributes to the spread of HIV, physical and emotional stress, depression, substance use, serious injuries, and higher rates of mortality in low-income settings. This paper explores the ethical implications raised by research on IPV by global health scholars. Drawing on Hedgecoe's work on critical bioethics to analyse a qualitative study of IPV in …
We’re giving you something so we get something in return”
Strategies and Challenges in Preventing Violence Against Canadian Indoor Sex Workers
Objectives. To examine indoor sex workers’ strategies in preventing workplace violence and influential socio-structural conditions. Methods. Data included qualitative interviews with 85 sex workers in British Columbia, Canada, from 2014 through 2016. For analyses, we used interpretive thematic techniques informed by World Health Organization position statements on violence. Results. Robbery, nonpayment, financial exploitation, and privacy violati…
Distribution of Harm Reduction Kits in a Specialty HIV Hospital
Casey House, a small Toronto, Ontario, hospital for people living with HIV, implemented a harm-reduction kit distribution program in October 2014 to decrease harms from reuse of injection and smoking equipment among its clients—inpatients and outpatients. Program statistics (November 2014–June 2017) show an increase in the number of kits—injection and smoking—distributed each year. The program is perceived by staff to communicate openness and inc…
The rise of molecular HIV surveillance
Public health experts in the US and Canada are increasingly mobilizing molecular-based surveillance techniques in seeking to identify and control HIV. Both countries are also leading in the world to criminalize HIV exposure, transmission and non-disclosure, as well as having pervasive ongoing criminalization regimes toward drug use, sex work and migration. Molecular surveillance aims to rapidly identify ‘risk network’ clusters of people normally …
Experiences and perceptions of social constraints and social change among lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons in Lesotho
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and other sexually and gender diverse persons negotiate for their identities, create communities and advocate for their rights throughout the world. However, there are limited data about the perceptions of social change among sexually and gender diverse persons in contexts where same-sex sexual practices have been recently decriminalised, such as in 2010 in Lesotho. We conducted semi-structured in-depth intervi…
Cannabis legalization in Canada
A Seat at the Table
Recently, scholars have begun to critically interrogate the way community participation functions discursively within community-based participatory research (CBPR) and raise questions about its function and limits. Community advisory committees (CACs) are often used within CBPR as one way to involve community members in research from design to dissemination. However, CACs may not always be designed in ways that are accessible for communities expe…
What Can we Learn from the English-Language Media Coverage of Cannabis Legalization in Canada
Background: In October 2018, Canada became the second country in the world to legalize cannabis. However, at this stage in the implementation process, it can be challenging to get a sense of the outcomes of this policy shift – hence why we turned to media. Purpose/objectives: We present the results of a qualitative content analysis conducted on the media coverage between October 2018 and April 2019. Methods: We used Google News and ProQuest datab…
Corporate contact tracing as a pandemic response
Since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, a steady stream of propositions from tech giants and start-ups alike has furnished us with the idea that GPS- or Bluetooth-enabled contact tracing apps are a vital part of the pandemic response. This commentary considers these apps as ‘corporate contact tracing’, emphasizing the private-sector role that such developments imply. We first discuss corporate contact tracing’s potential to de-center the power …
Journeying together
Picturing Participation
Community engagement is considered a cornerstone of health promotion practice. Yet engagement is a fuzzy term signifying a range of practices. Health scholarship has focused primarily on individual effects of engagement. To understand the complexities of engagement, organizations must also consider relational, structural, and/or organizational factors that inform stakeholders’ subjective understandings and experiences. Community engagement proces…
Political science (51 works) · Medicine (47 works) · Sociology (47 works) · Public relations (34 works) · Psychology (33 works) · HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk (29 works) · Nursing (28 works) · Law (25 works) · Public health (24 works) · Qualitative research (17 works)