Dr Rachel Sutherland presented at the 2020 NDARC Webinar Series on Thursday, 9 July 2020.

This seminar provides an overview of The Australian’s Drug Use: Adapting to Pandemic Threats (ADAPT) study, including some preliminary findings.

Governments around the world have imposed restrictions on gatherings and movement in an attempt to reduce the transmission of COVID-19. This has likely had a significant impact on illicit drug markets, use patterns, harms and help-seeking, however the extent of this impact in the Australian context remains unclear. The ADAPT study was developed to address this knowledge gap and includes an online survey of people who were regularly using illicit drugs in 2019 (i.e. prior to the emergence of COVID-19). This seminar provides an overview of the ADAPT study and presents some preliminary findings from the baseline sample.

Speaker Bio:
Dr Rachel Sutherland, Research Fellow
National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, UNSW

Dr Rachel Sutherland is an experienced Research Fellow, with more than 11 years’ experience working in the alcohol and other drug (AOD) research sector. She has worked on a wide variety of research projects, most notably as the National Coordinator of the Illicit Drug Reporting System (IDRS) and the Ecstasy and related Drugs Reporting System (EDRS) (2011-2018). In 2018, Rachel completed her PhD, which examined the New Psychoactive Substances (NPS) market in Australia. Her research interests include illicit drug surveillance, NPS, cryptomarkets and harm reduction.