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Monitoring quality and coverage of harm reduction services for people who use drugs: a consensus study

Overview of attention for article published in Harm Reduction Journal, April 2017
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About this Attention Score

  • In the top 25% of all research outputs scored by Altmetric
  • High Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age (91st percentile)
  • Good Attention Score compared to outputs of the same age and source (76th percentile)

Mentioned by

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1 policy source
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37 X users
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2 Google+ users

Citations

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36 Dimensions

Readers on

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293 Mendeley
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Title
Monitoring quality and coverage of harm reduction services for people who use drugs: a consensus study
Published in
Harm Reduction Journal, April 2017
DOI 10.1186/s12954-017-0141-6
Pubmed ID
Authors

Lucas Wiessing, Marica Ferri, Vendula Běláčková, Patrizia Carrieri, Samuel R. Friedman, Cinta Folch, Kate Dolan, Brian Galvin, Peter Vickerman, Jeffrey V. Lazarus, Viktor Mravčík, Mirjam Kretzschmar, Vana Sypsa, Ana Sarasa-Renedo, Anneli Uusküla, Dimitrios Paraskevis, Luis Mendão, Diana Rossi, Nadine van Gelder, Luke Mitcheson, Letizia Paoli, Cristina Diaz Gomez, Maitena Milhet, Nicoleta Dascalu, Jonathan Knight, Gordon Hay, Eleni Kalamara, Roland Simon, EUBEST working group, Catherine Comiskey, Carla Rossi, Paul Griffiths

Abstract

Despite advances in our knowledge of effective services for people who use drugs over the last decades globally, coverage remains poor in most countries, while quality is often unknown. This paper aims to discuss the historical development of successful epidemiological indicators and to present a framework for extending them with additional indicators of coverage and quality of harm reduction services, for monitoring and evaluation at international, national or subnational levels. The ultimate aim is to improve these services in order to reduce health and social problems among people who use drugs, such as human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and hepatitis C virus (HCV) infection, crime and legal problems, overdose (death) and other morbidity and mortality. The framework was developed collaboratively using consensus methods involving nominal group meetings, review of existing quality standards, repeated email commenting rounds and qualitative analysis of opinions/experiences from a broad range of professionals/experts, including members of civil society and organisations representing people who use drugs. Twelve priority candidate indicators are proposed for opioid agonist therapy (OAT), needle and syringe programmes (NSP) and generic cross-cutting aspects of harm reduction (and potentially other drug) services. Under the specific OAT indicators, priority indicators included 'coverage', 'waiting list time', 'dosage' and 'availability in prisons'. For the specific NSP indicators, the priority indicators included 'coverage', 'number of needles/syringes distributed/collected', 'provision of other drug use paraphernalia' and 'availability in prisons'. Among the generic or cross-cutting indicators the priority indicators were 'infectious diseases counselling and care', 'take away naloxone', 'information on safe use/sex' and 'condoms'. We discuss conditions for the successful development of the suggested indicators and constraints (e.g. funding, ideology). We propose conducting a pilot study to test the feasibility and applicability of the proposed indicators before their scaling up and routine implementation, to evaluate their effectiveness in comparing service coverage and quality across countries. The establishment of an improved set of validated and internationally agreed upon best practice indicators for monitoring harm reduction service will provide a structural basis for public health and epidemiological studies and support evidence and human rights-based health policies, services and interventions.

X Demographics

X Demographics

The data shown below were collected from the profiles of 37 X users who shared this research output. Click here to find out more about how the information was compiled.
Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 293 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 293 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 45 15%
Researcher 42 14%
Student > Bachelor 37 13%
Student > Ph. D. Student 27 9%
Student > Doctoral Student 17 6%
Other 40 14%
Unknown 85 29%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 47 16%
Nursing and Health Professions 39 13%
Social Sciences 34 12%
Psychology 23 8%
Pharmacology, Toxicology and Pharmaceutical Science 8 3%
Other 36 12%
Unknown 106 36%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 27. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 08 September 2019.
All research outputs
#1,405,252
of 25,299,129 outputs
Outputs from Harm Reduction Journal
#223
of 1,100 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#26,957
of 315,927 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Harm Reduction Journal
#6
of 21 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 25,299,129 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 94th percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 1,100 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 29.0. This one has done well, scoring higher than 79% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 315,927 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 91% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 21 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has done well, scoring higher than 76% of its contemporaries.