Gillian Kolla
Biographic Data
| ID | 5408930 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Gillian Kolla |
| GIVEN NAMES | Gillian |
| FAMILY NAME | Kolla |
| SIGNATURE | KOLLA G |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Toronto |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-5743-7153 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 23 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2012 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Reduced risk of overdose among clients of a safer opioid supply program in Southwestern Ontario: A pre-post observational cohort study
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
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on access to harm reduction and treatment services among people who inject drugs in Toronto, Canada: A qualitative investigation
(230 words) The COVID-19 pandemic and related restrictions exacerbated Canada’s ongoing drug toxicity overdose crisis. Opioid agonist therapy (OAT), safer opioid supply (SOS), and supervised consumption sites (SCS) are interventions that aim to reduce risk of morbidity and mortality from drug toxicity and were affected by COVID-19. Between September and October 2020, we conducted qualitative interviews with 24 people who inject drugs receiving se…
Trends in varying modes of drug use in opioid toxicity deaths in Ontario from 2017 to 2021
Changing trends in safer opioid supply uptake, dose and hydromorphone volume in Ontario: A population-based cross-sectional study
An accelerating number of safer opioid supply recipients over time, coupled with rising immediate-release hydromorphone doses likely reflects efforts to meet the needs of people who use drugs in the context of an increasingly potent unregulated opioid supply, particularly as this supply changed throughout the COVID-19 pandemic
Gendered Experiences of Ontological Insecurity Among Women Who Use Drugs and Experience Housing Insecurity: A Critical Narrative Analysis
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…
Comprehensive substance use services within primary care settings: The Safer Opioid Supply program at London InterCommunity Health Centre
Positive health and social outcomes demonstrate the utility of embedding comprehensive substance use services within a primary health care model to address health and social complexity among people who use drugs amid the continuing toxic drug crisis. Responding to an increasingly volatile unregulated supply of drugs, having limited medication options, and providing comprehensive care without long-term funding remain ongoing challenges
Covid-19 isolation and recovery sites evaluation: Lessons learned for systems innovation
Just have this come from their prescription pad: The medicalization of safer supply from the perspectives of health planners in BC, Canada
Context In March 2020, British Columbia introduced the Risk Mitigation Guidance (RMG) to enable the prescription of pharmaceutical substitutes for the unregulated drug market to decrease overdose deaths and COVID-19 infections. This study presents health planners’ perspectives on the RMG adoption within a medicalized system of care.Methods We conducted interviews with 28 health planners to obtain their views on implementation. We undertook a them…
“Everybody is impacted. Everybody's hurting”: Grief, loss and the emotional impacts of overdose on harm reduction workers
Our study highlights opportunities for organizational practices that better support harm reduction workers, including formal emotional supports and community-based supportive care services. Improvement to the socio-economic-political determinants of work such as adequate compensation and access to full benefit packages are also needed in the harm reduction sector for all workers
Mapping a moral panic: News media narratives and medical expertise in public debates on safer supply, diversion, and youth drug use in Canada
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…
Prescribed safer opioid supply: A scoping review of the evidence
BACKGROUND: Safer opioid supply programs provide prescription pharmaceutical opioids, often with supportive services, to people at high risk of experiencing harms related to substance use. However, questions regarding the effectiveness and safety of this practice remain. We conducted a scoping review of literature describing client outcomes from formal opioid supply programs providing prescriptions for pharmaceutical opioids, and the perceptions …
Safer Opioid Supply programs: Hydromorphone prescribing in Ontario as a harm reduction intervention to combat the drug poisoning crisis
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
‘I don't chase drugs as much anymore, and I'm not dead’: Client reported outcomes associated with safer opioid supply programs in Ontario, Canada
Challenges of implementing safer supply programs in Canada during the Covid-19 pandemic: A qualitative analysis
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: A qualitative study comparing organization-based and informal methods
Assessing the impact of the slow-release oral morphine drug shortages in Ontario, Canada: A population-based time series analysis
Requiring help injecting among people who inject drugs in Toronto, Canada: Characterising the need to address sociodemographic disparities and substance‐use specific patterns
Association of Illicit Fentanyl Use with Injection Risk Practices Among People who Inject Drugs
Covid just kind of opened a can of whoop-ass”: The rapid growth of safer supply prescribing during the pandemic documented through an environmental scan of addiction and harm reduction services in Can…
Data confirmed the capacity for rapid scale-up of flexible, community-based safer supply prescribing during dual public health emergencies. Geographical, client demographic, and funding gaps highlight the need to target barriers to implementation, service delivery and sustainability
Characterizing safer supply prescribing of immediate release hydromorphone for individuals with opioid use disorder across Ontario, Canada
Medicalization under prohibition: The tactics and limits of medicalization in the spaces where people use illicit drugs
The ‘Satellite Sites’ are a harm reduction intervention in which people who use illicit drugs are employed by a community health centre to run satellite harm reduction programs within their homes. Satellite Sites straddle two worlds, at once sites of illicit and stigmatized activities, while also being sites of public health intervention. They offer a unique opportunity to examine the challenges of medicalizing a place that is still criminalized.…
Help me fix: The provision of injection assistance at an unsanctioned overdose prevention site in Toronto, Canada
Critical studies of harm reduction: Overdose response in uncertain political times
It's too much, I'm getting really tired of it’: Overdose response and structural vulnerabilities among harm reduction workers in community settings
It's our safe sanctuary’: Experiences of using an unsanctioned overdose prevention site in Toronto, Ontario
The unsanctioned OPS in Toronto served an important role in defining new, community-led, flexible responses to opioid overdose-related deaths at a time of markedly increasing mortality. Providing harm reduction services in diverse settings and expanding services to include smoking and assisted injection may increase access for marginalized people who use drugs
A New Realistic Evaluation Analysis Method: Linked Coding of Context, Mechanism, and Outcome Relationships
In attempting to use a realistic evaluation approach to explore the role of Community Parents in early parenting programs in Toronto, a novel technique was developed to analyze the links between contexts (C), mechanisms (M) and outcomes (O) directly from experienced practitioner interviews. Rather than coding the interviews into themes in terms of context, intervention elements (mechanisms) and outcomes separately and which could be assembled int…
Safer Opioid Supply programs: Hydromorphone prescribing in Ontario as a harm reduction intervention to combat the drug poisoning crisis
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: A Critical Narrative Analysis
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…
Comprehensive substance use services within primary care settings: The Safer Opioid Supply program at London InterCommunity Health Centre
Positive health and social outcomes demonstrate the utility of embedding comprehensive substance use services within a primary health care model to address health and social complexity among people who use drugs amid the continuing toxic drug crisis. Responding to an increasingly volatile unregulated supply of drugs, having limited medication options, and providing comprehensive care without long-term funding remain ongoing challenges
A New Realistic Evaluation Analysis Method: Linked Coding of Context, Mechanism, and Outcome Relationships
In attempting to use a realistic evaluation approach to explore the role of Community Parents in early parenting programs in Toronto, a novel technique was developed to analyze the links between contexts (C), mechanisms (M) and outcomes (O) directly from experienced practitioner interviews. Rather than coding the interviews into themes in terms of context, intervention elements (mechanisms) and outcomes separately and which could be assembled int…
Design considerations for supervised consumption facilities (SCFs): Preferences for facilities where people can inject and smoke drugs
Transition to Injection Drug Use: The Role of Initiators
Risk creating and risk reducing: Community perceptions of supervised consumption facilities for illicit drug use
Progressive public health authorities in high-income countries have advocated supervised consumption facilities, where people who use illicit drugs can consume them in a hygienic, supervised environment, as a way of reducing drug-related risks to both people who use drugs and communities. However, the planning of such facilities has often met with strong reactions from the local community. ‘Not in my backyard’ (NIMBY) type reactions are frequentl…
Preventing Injection Drug use Initiation: State of the Evidence and Opportunities for the Future
It's too much, I'm getting really tired of it’: Overdose response and structural vulnerabilities among harm reduction workers in community settings
It's our safe sanctuary’: Experiences of using an unsanctioned overdose prevention site in Toronto, Ontario
The unsanctioned OPS in Toronto served an important role in defining new, community-led, flexible responses to opioid overdose-related deaths at a time of markedly increasing mortality. Providing harm reduction services in diverse settings and expanding services to include smoking and assisted injection may increase access for marginalized people who use drugs
Help me fix: The provision of injection assistance at an unsanctioned overdose prevention site in Toronto, Canada
Critical studies of harm reduction: Overdose response in uncertain political times
Medicalization under prohibition: The tactics and limits of medicalization in the spaces where people use illicit drugs
The ‘Satellite Sites’ are a harm reduction intervention in which people who use illicit drugs are employed by a community health centre to run satellite harm reduction programs within their homes. Satellite Sites straddle two worlds, at once sites of illicit and stigmatized activities, while also being sites of public health intervention. They offer a unique opportunity to examine the challenges of medicalizing a place that is still criminalized.…
Requiring help injecting among people who inject drugs in Toronto, Canada: Characterising the need to address sociodemographic disparities and substance‐use specific patterns
Association of Illicit Fentanyl Use with Injection Risk Practices Among People who Inject Drugs
Covid just kind of opened a can of whoop-ass”: The rapid growth of safer supply prescribing during the pandemic documented through an environmental scan of addiction and harm reduction services in Can…
Data confirmed the capacity for rapid scale-up of flexible, community-based safer supply prescribing during dual public health emergencies. Geographical, client demographic, and funding gaps highlight the need to target barriers to implementation, service delivery and sustainability
Characterizing safer supply prescribing of immediate release hydromorphone for individuals with opioid use disorder across Ontario, Canada
‘I don't chase drugs as much anymore, and I'm not dead’: Client reported outcomes associated with safer opioid supply programs in Ontario, Canada
Challenges of implementing safer supply programs in Canada during the Covid-19 pandemic: A qualitative analysis
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: A qualitative study comparing organization-based and informal methods
Assessing the impact of the slow-release oral morphine drug shortages in Ontario, Canada: A population-based time series analysis
Just have this come from their prescription pad: The medicalization of safer supply from the perspectives of health planners in BC, Canada
Context In March 2020, British Columbia introduced the Risk Mitigation Guidance (RMG) to enable the prescription of pharmaceutical substitutes for the unregulated drug market to decrease overdose deaths and COVID-19 infections. This study presents health planners’ perspectives on the RMG adoption within a medicalized system of care.Methods We conducted interviews with 28 health planners to obtain their views on implementation. We undertook a them…
“Everybody is impacted. Everybody's hurting”: Grief, loss and the emotional impacts of overdose on harm reduction workers
Our study highlights opportunities for organizational practices that better support harm reduction workers, including formal emotional supports and community-based supportive care services. Improvement to the socio-economic-political determinants of work such as adequate compensation and access to full benefit packages are also needed in the harm reduction sector for all workers
Mapping a moral panic: News media narratives and medical expertise in public debates on safer supply, diversion, and youth drug use in Canada
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…
Prescribed safer opioid supply: A scoping review of the evidence
BACKGROUND: Safer opioid supply programs provide prescription pharmaceutical opioids, often with supportive services, to people at high risk of experiencing harms related to substance use. However, questions regarding the effectiveness and safety of this practice remain. We conducted a scoping review of literature describing client outcomes from formal opioid supply programs providing prescriptions for pharmaceutical opioids, and the perceptions …
Safer Opioid Supply programs: Hydromorphone prescribing in Ontario as a harm reduction intervention to combat the drug poisoning crisis
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
The impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on access to harm reduction and treatment services among people who inject drugs in Toronto, Canada: A qualitative investigation
(230 words) The COVID-19 pandemic and related restrictions exacerbated Canada’s ongoing drug toxicity overdose crisis. Opioid agonist therapy (OAT), safer opioid supply (SOS), and supervised consumption sites (SCS) are interventions that aim to reduce risk of morbidity and mortality from drug toxicity and were affected by COVID-19. Between September and October 2020, we conducted qualitative interviews with 24 people who inject drugs receiving se…
Trends in varying modes of drug use in opioid toxicity deaths in Ontario from 2017 to 2021
Medicine (26 works) · Opioid Use Disorder Treatment (25 works) · HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk (21 works) · Nursing (14 works) · Sociology (14 works) · Business (13 works) · Psychology (13 works) · Public health (13 works) · Political science (12 works) · Harm reduction (11 works)