Karan Bains, MSc student – University of British Columbia

Supervisor – Daniel Coombs

Collaborator – Michael Irvine (BC Centre for Disease Control)

Project Description: The toxic drug overdose crisis in British Columbia has continued at a high level for over eight years since the public health emergency was first declared in 2016. We (Coombs and Irvine,
with collaborators at the BC Centre for Disease Control and elsewhere) have previously
developed statistical models of the rates of overdose and death over ‘me, with the goals of
assessing the efficacy of the provincial public health response (Irvine et al, Lancet Public Health
2018, Addiction 2019 and International Journal of Drug Policy 2021). However, the style of
modelling that we used in the previous work was population-based and did not include
individual-based information that would allow us to answer questions such as the total number
of overdoses experienced by an individual over ‘me, or incorporate individual-based data on
‘me spent in treatment and ‘me before relapse. During this collabora’ve project, Karan Bains
will work to fill this gap on the individual side of the modelling picture, using a combina’on of
ODE-based and branching process models. Dr Coombs and Dr Irvine will provide modelling
guidance and we will bring in other expertise from BCCDC as needed to help us with
parameterization and to set practical and useful model targets.