Young people at risk of transitioning to injecting: what do they know about where to get sterile needles?

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on young people at risk of transitioning to injecting and explores what they know about where to obtain sterile needles. We used cross-sectional survey data collected from 210 at-risk young people. While a third (34.3%) of participants thought they knew where to obtain sterile needles, fewer (24.3%) could correctly identify a service and the sources most commonly identified – hospitals (27.8%) and pharmacies (25.0%) – were not specifically needle distribution services. Multivariate analysis identified that recent contact with social and health services had no impact on whether participants knew where to get sterile equipment. This suggests that needle distribution policies might focus less on getting young people to visit primary needle distribution sites, which they know little about, and more on improving services that they already know about – hospitals and pharmacies – or finding ways of bringing sterile needles to them, such as through peer distribution.

KEYWORDS:

• Young people
• needle exchange
• Needle and Syringe Programmes
• knowledge

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the study participants for generously sharing their time and stories. We acknowledge the excellent contribution of the study’s Reference Group, who provided intellectual and practical insight about the study’s design, methods and findings. We thank Daren Fisher and Hannah Wilson for their research assistance. The study was funded by a grant from NSW Health. The Centre for Social Research in Health is supported by a grant from the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This study was funded by a grant from NSW Health. The Centre for Social Research in Health is supported by a grant from the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing.