Association between neighbourhood socioeconomic characteristics and high-risk injection behaviour amongst injection drug users living in inner and other city areas in Montreal, Canada

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Area-level socioeconomic conditions are associated with epidemic rates of viral hepatitis and HIV amongst urban injection drug users (IDUs), but whether specific socioeconomic markers are uniformly related to IDU outcomes across different urban environments is unclear. We evaluated whether injection behaviour is differentially related to neighbourhood socioeconomic characteristics for IDUs in inner city vs. surrounding urban areas. METHODS: The study population was 468 active IDUs on the Island of Montréal. Neighbourhoods were represented as 500m radius buffers around individual IDU dwelling places. High-risk injection behaviour (HRIB) was defined dichotomously. Relations between..