The seminar will give an overview of a study that investigates the impact of opioid agonist treatment (OAT) on hospitalisations for injecting-related diseases using large administrative health data. The sample includes people who have been prescribed OAT in New South Wales from 2001 to 2017. We compared the incidence rates of hospitalisations for injecting-related diseases (i.e., skin and soft tissue infections, sepsis, endocarditis, etc.) during OAT to time out of OAT, to see whether there was a reduction in risk of hospitalisation.

About the speaker

Samantha Colledge-Frisby has been working at the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre since 2016 and commenced her PhD in 2018, which she submitted for review in February of this year. She was awarded a UNSW Scientia Scholarship and NHMRC PhD scholarship in 2018. Samantha has since started her postdoctoral research fellowship at NDARC. Her thesis investigated the epidemiology of mental and physical health harms that affect people who inject drugs, with a focus on injecting-related diseases. She has been involved in a range of other projects that largely focus on illicit drug use, mental health, and infectious diseases.