Overdose mortality has become a generation-defining public health crisis in Canada but there is a lack of meaningful action to address it. We therefore need to create an evidence-based roadmap to end the overdose epidemic in Canada.
This roadmap has three key components. First, we will generate estimates of the key populations at risk of overdose (youth, tradespeople, rural populations, Indigenous communities, and people living with socioeconomic marginalization in urban centres), as well as effect sizes for interventions and policies (expressed as population preventable fractions and population attributable risks). Second, we will employ these estimates to develop simulation models describing how different policy, programmatic, and clinical intervention scale-up scenarios will decelerate, reverse, or accelerate the overdose mortality epidemic across key populations. Third, we will develop and deliver a roadmap to end Canada’s overdose epidemic to policymakers, multisectoral stakeholders, affected communities, people who use drugs, and the general public. This will link different scenarios to specific policy levers and their likely outcomes, along with measures of uncertainty, thereby providing clarity regarding what is possible, what is most likely, and how long it will take.
Canada is a leader in policy and programmatic innovation on substance use. Without a coherent national strategy to end the overdose epidemic, however, this innovation will fail to yield real gains in terms of lives saved.