SPRINGFIELD — Tapestry Health is a key partner in a new, $12-million Brown University five-year study of drug use and barriers to health care services, like HIV and hepatitis C treatment and overdose prevention.
Starting this fall, Brown and its partners — Tapestry Health, in Western Massachusetts; Community Care Alliance, in Woonsocket, Rhode Island; and Vermonters for Criminal Justice Reform, in Burlington, Vermont — will recruit 1,200 participants across all three states and follow them for five years, according to statements from Tapestry and Brown.
The study is funded by a National Institute on Drug Abuse grant.
Tapestry will connect researchers with participants and provide insight into regional needs, challenges, and opportunities in Western Massachusetts, according to the statement.
Researchers will examine drug use trends, barriers to HIV and hepatitis C care, the effects of overdose prevention, and how conditions such as mental health and chronic disease influence well-being, the university said.
They want to rapidly identify infectious disease outbreaks and changes in drug use, such as new contaminants in the drug supply.
“This presents an exciting opportunity to shed some light on what’s going on in these areas that haven’t been explored in the same way that urban areas have,” Brandon Marshall, a professor of epidemiology at the Brown University School of Public Health, said in the statement.
Fifty-year-old Tapestry says it provides syringe access, overdose prevention, HIV and hepatitis C testing, and health care across Western Massachusetts.
“At a time when evidence-based harm reduction is under scrutiny, and communities are confronting the human toll of overdose, HIV, and hepatitis C, this study could not come at a more critical moment,” said Mavis Nimoh, CEO of Tapestry Health, in the statement.
The project also brings together researchers from Brown University, the University of California San Diego and the University of Vermont.
