What can a national health data system reveal about perinatal opioid use in Canada and the supports families need most? In this episode, Dr. Andi Camden and peer researcher Ashley Smoke speak about the Canadian Perinatal Opioid Project, its interactive dashboard, and the importance of storytelling, community engagement, and compassionate, evidence-based care.
What can a national health data system reveal about perinatal opioid use in Canada and the supports families need most? In this episode, Dr. Andi Camden and peer researcher Ashley Smoke speak about the Canadian Perinatal Opioid Project, its interactive dashboard, and the importance of storytelling, community engagement, and compassionate, evidence-based care.
Dr. Andi Camden is an Epidemiologist and Senior Research Associate at the Edwin S.H. Leong Centre for Healthy Children at SickKids and the University of Toronto, as well as an ICES Fellow. She holds both a PhD and an MPH in Epidemiology from the University of Toronto, where she also completed a 2-year postdoctoral fellowship. Andi’s research uses administrative data and community engagement to explore the impact of medication use, including opioids, during pregnancy on maternal and child health across the life course. Andi currently leads a Public Health Agency of Canada-funded project called the Canadian Perinatal Opioid Project where she is developing Canada’s first health data system to monitor perinatal opioid use and subsequent health outcomes.
Ashley Smoke is a First Nations community member from Alderville First Nation, a Peer Researcher with the Canadian Perinatal Opioid Project, a Drug Strategy Coordinator, consultant, and public speaker based in Port Hope, Ontario. Ashley brings together professional expertise and lived experience to help achieve better healthcare for people who use drugs, particularly Indigenous families and pregnant and parenting people. Both of their children were born while Ashley was receiving methadone treatment, giving them firsthand experience navigating pregnancy, parenting, health care, stigma, and systems that often make families feel judged rather than supported. Through research, education, and advocacy, Ashley works to challenge harmful assumptions and help build more compassionate, culturally safe, and evidence-based approaches to perinatal substance use care.
Resources
Dashboard - Canadian Perinatal Opioid Project
Misty Pratt
Perinatal opioid use affects 1000s of families each year and is a growing public health concern. With research showing that 5% of births in Ontario have prenatal opioid exposure. Babies exposed to opioids have a higher risk of being born prematurely, and both pregnant people and their babies may go on to experience health complications. Yet, in many Canadian provinces, a lack of data on the scope of the issue leaves service providers, doctors, and families themselves in the dark when it comes to what we should be doing to reduce harm and provide effective treatment services. Today, on In Our VoICES, we're joined by two guests who are working to address those data gaps through the Canadian Perinatal Opioid Project, or CPOP, as we'll call it, a national public health surveillance system. We talk about the launch of CPOP's interactive dashboard, the importance of storytelling, and how peer researchers are integral to the project. Dr. Andi Camden is the lead of CPOP, and her research uses data and community engagement to explore the impact of medication use during pregnancy on maternal and child health. We are also joined by Ashley Smoke, a First Nations community member from Alderville First Nation and peer researcher with CPOP, who brings together professional expertise and lived experience to help achieve better healthcare for people who use drugs, particularly Indigenous families and pregnant and parenting people. Andi and Ashley, thank you both for being here today.
Andi Camden
Thank you for having us today, Misty.
Misty Pratt
Andi, what is the Canadian Perinatal Opioid Project, or CPOP, and what are its main goals?
Andi Camden
The Canadian Perinatal Opioid Project is Canada's first public health surveillance system, or national health data system, as we like to call it. And this data system is designed to monitor perinatal opioid use, so that is in pregnancy and the first year after pregnancy, as well as short-term maternal and child health outcomes. This national data health system is really important because it's bringing together population-based data, so that is from routine interactions with the healthcare system from five different provinces, including Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Ontario, and Saskatchewan. And for the first time, we'll be able to see what the trends look like nationally as well as provincially. Right now our dashboard includes pregnancies conceived from 2013 to 2023, as well as measures of opioid use for pain management, treatment for opioid use disorder, and non-medical opioid use, as well as important social determinants of health and health outcomes. And I lead this project with Dr. Astrid Guttmann and Dr. Hilary Brown, and this project is supported by funding through the Public Health Agency of Canada.
Misty Pratt
And what's the overall goal of the project?
Andi Camden
So the main goal of this project is really to generate information that can be used to support and improve the health and well-being of families impacted by perinatal opioid exposure, and we hope to achieve this goal by strengthening knowledge of perinatal opioid use through community engagement with people with lived and living experience, and clinical and policy partners, and through the data harmonization across provinces. We also developed an open access interactive online dashboard that you can find at CPOProject.ca, and importantly, all the indicators that are included on the dashboard were selected by people with lived and living experience, as well as clinical and policy partners. And the dashboard will continually be updated with data from different provinces, as well as different indicators. So stay tuned for some of those changes.
Misty Pratt
And where did the idea come from?
Andi Camden
So the idea for this surveillance system came from my PhD that was focused on Ontario, and through our research, we noticed that there was really a lack of information about perinatal opioid use across Canada. At the time there was only a couple provinces who were able to provide estimates of what this looked like in pregnant people and for children, and there was also a lack of clinical practice guidelines after the neonatal period to support long-term health. So we really felt like there was an opportunity to strengthen knowledge gaps and to start addressing it by providing freely available open access information across Canada.
Misty Pratt
And in terms of open access information, it sounds like obviously it's helpful for people working in the field, whether that be service providers or healthcare providers. But who else is it for? Who else could go on this website or dashboard to find out more information?
Andi Camden
So we've designed our dashboard to really be applicable to a number of different audiences. We hope that people who use opioids themselves will check out the dashboard. We've heard from people in our advisory group that it actually is quite comforting to go onto the dashboard and see that they're not alone. They're not the only people who are using opioids in pregnancy, and it's a great place to find out more information. But it can also be used by clinicians, service providers, healthcare providers, as well as policymakers and decision makers as well. So we've designed it so that it's friendly for all audiences.
Misty Pratt
Yes, it's totally friendly, and I've used it myself. And so we are going to link to the website in the show notes so that people can check it out. And I'm curious if you can describe for us, I know this is podcast; it's hard to show, but what you can find on there, and what are some of the trends that have come out of some of the data that you have on there right now?
Andi Camden
So, at the moment, you can find data for Ontario and Manitoba, spanning from 2013 to 2023. You can see the prevalence of different types of opioids that are used in pregnancy and also the year following pregnancy. We can look at trends over time. You can start digging into different maternal characteristics by the types of opioids that are used, so you can really get a sense of what the different needs are of different people who use different types of opioids, and I would say some of the interesting trends would be that Manitoba and Ontario actually both show declines in prescribing for opioid use for pain. So this is a positive trend that we think is likely a reflection of more conservative prescribing guidelines, as well as an increased awareness of opioid-related harms. Unfortunately, we do also see a similar declining trend for opioid agonist therapy, which is a treatment for opioid use disorder in pregnancy, and that's more concerning because we also see reports of opioid toxicity in pregnancy and postpartum increasing. It's actually become one of the leading causes of pregnancy associated death. So to see OAT decreasing in light of those trends is concerning. It's definitely something we're going to look more into.
Misty Pratt
Because OAT as a treatment, then if it's declining, then people are less likely to be accessing that.
Andi Camden
Exactly, and it's one of the strongest preventive approaches to opioid toxicity.
Misty Pratt
Ashley, I'd love to bring you into the conversation too. Could you tell us a bit first about yourself and what your involvement as a peer researcher with CPOP looks like?
Ashley Smoke
So, my name's Ashley Smoke., like we said. I guess I came into this work because I have lived experience of opioid use during pregnancy, postnatal, prenatal, like all of it. So I think like that is what led to my involvement in the project. I also, because of my experiences, I've done a lot of research related to substance use, and somehow I got connected with Andi, and we we were,
Misty Pratt
I was going to ask. That was going to be one of my questions: was how did you get connected with Andi? How did that come about?
Ashley Smoke
I believe it's because I was doing another project on perinatal opioid use, and I also I do a lot of work at many organizations. So I work with the Ontario Drug Policy Research Network, and that's I guess one of the places that I connected with Andi. I've als done like a video with SickKids, and I think that my experience with that video it was around First Nations women and perinatal opioid use, so I think that experience kind of led me to want to do more research and not just share my experience, but find out about other people's experience and see if everyone else is kind of seeing what I'm seeing, and yeah, I guess that's why I'm interested and involved in the project. But my role as a peer researcher-it's very rewarding because I get to work with a group of advisory members, and we talk about the data and see where we can fill in the gaps because a lot of the data we work with is numbers, and sometimes the numbers don't tell the whole story. So it's nice to be able to work with a group of parents who can help fill those knowledge gaps and can guide the project and its implementation and delivery in ways that maybe aren't possible without the input of community. So I like that part of my role really the most. I also do like I don't know, I review research, I do things like this, speaking engagements, and I really help like like the storytelling project. I did interviews, and in that, I got to hear a lot about like the actual experiences that our advisory, some of our advisory members, and other. Parents were having and really got to like put together the pieces, and that's why I really like doing the peer researcher role because I like to put the pieces of the research together with the experiences of community.
Misty Pratt
And going back to what you said before about not just wanting to share your story, like I think sometimes when it comes to peer involvement in research, we're asking people to consult or to to just tell us a few things, and then we kind of write it off as like that's the involvement they've had. But from this perspective, it sounds to me like peer researchers are are there from start to finish, and it's not just about you telling them things. It's also this kind of back and forth relationship.
Ashley Smoke
When Andi and I come up with like my tasks, it's not like this is what you're gonna do and this is what we need of you. It's more like "how can we help you learn?" Like I mentioned, I've never really worked on quantitative data, and so Andi was like, "Well, you want to help me analyze some data? Let's do it." So I think it was like that reciprocal learning relationship too that's really important in the peer researcher role.
Andi Camden
I think the reciprocity is so important, and it's something from the beginning that I think one of our first meetings with Ashley and the advisory group was to find out what people's priorities are, and I think that it's so important to have that two-way relationship. And the priorities that came out of our lived experience advisory group have been projects that we worked on. So we've done the storytelling project that we can talk about a little bit more that Ashley has referred to. We also have a body mapping project coming up that will look at stigma. So we're doing. I feel like we change as we go, and we are, I think it's important. We're listening to people and what's important to them, and I feel like that's what makes me feel good about our our like working relationship as well. So it's been fantastic having Ashley on the team. I have to say.
Misty Pratt
And Ashley, how is the dashboard then useful for people with lived experience of opioid use disorder or their family members, friends, caregivers? How are they using the dashboard, have you heard?
Ashley Smoke
Well, I can tell you from my own experience: the people around parents who are on opioids and pregnant often don't know that methadone is actually or OAT is actually recommended during pregnancy. Like a lot of people think, you need to stop taking OAT for opioid use, and like you need to cut everything cold turkey and you know grin and bear it and have the baby, but that's really not realistic. It's actually harmful to the baby to quit taking OAT. So I think it helps people understand that they're not alone, but it helps people teach those around them how their care is impacting the fetus or the baby and themselves. Like it really helps change attitudes, I guess, as well. Like, if you can have that information, you can go and advocate for yourself and see if what you're experiencing is what others are experiencing. You can use it when you're going into your doctor's appointments. You can kind of have like a picture of other people's situations, so you can you know advocate for what you think you need, and I think that's really helpful. It also helps people like community members and people in leadership positions like make decisions that will be better for the care of women in general, but also those giving birth on opioids. So there's like many different things. It can help, like the greater community. It can help the family. It can help us advocate to the families around us, the doctors. It was interesting for me because through our work on this, I was having a conversation while I was pregnant with Andi, and I had never heard of this 'eat, sleep, console' thing before. And it's like a method that you use for neonatal abstinence syndrome. And there's an old method where they use morphine, and there's this newer method that doesn't necessarily look at medications, but more like connection and to like feeding the baby and breastfeeding and just like ways of keeping the mother and the baby together. And I would have never known about that had I not been a peer researcher and had we not been like having these discussions and had access to all this information. So my experience was so much better because I knew that, and it really helps the knowledge translation piece and advocating for yourself. But then also, the storytelling component is really beneficial for the community, because you can feel each other's pain, you can kind of relate to those stories, and and that can help you in your healing journey.
Misty Pratt
It sounds like from the way it's being used that it's busting some common myths or misconceptions about opioid use, like one of them being methadone's not safe. Are there others? Like, are there other ways that this is is helping either break down some stigma or or common misconceptions?
Ashley Smoke
A lot of people think that the higher dose that you have on OAT means like the higher chance that your baby will have withdrawal symptoms, and I've learned that that is completely incorrect and inaccurate, and it's actually very random, and it doesn't really have any relation. Also, just like having that withdrawal symptom, often like people think like the parents did something wrong, and the parents like use drugs, and that's why this is happening, and one doctor told me it's literally just like if you were taking another medication, and we had to get it out of the baby's system. Like it, this is just for a one disorder. It could have been something else. Like, and you might have still been in the same spot. So, also just that, like every single baby, kind of like what I said before, but a lot of people believe that the babies are all like experiencing those really drastic symptoms and the really like higher end on the spectrum symptoms, the ones that are really hard to watch, I guess, and that's not necessarily always the case. Like, there's very scary symptoms and ones that are visibly like impactful, but there's ones like the babies sneeze a lot and like their muscles are rigid and strong and like just like very simple things that you might not even attribute to opioid use necessarily, or may not even be because of opioid use, but they consider it a symptom. It's very misconstrued on what it actually looks like in reality.
Misty Pratt
I'm reflecting on the fact that we have such little data in general on any medication in pregnancy, so it's right? Like this, kind of goes back to the whole issue of this lack of data on women's health. That there's, as you said, other medications that cause withdrawal symptoms. Other medications that people are told, "Oh, you can't take this while you're pregnant", so people go off of it, and then either they're experiencing severe depression or anxiety or something like that. So,
Andi Camden
And there's also consequences with the untreated condition, right? So we know that if a pregnant person is using opioids from unregulated drug supply and they switch to OAT, there are several outcomes that improve for both mom and baby. And the neonatal withdrawal, like that, can also come from like a positive experience of a pregnant person in treatment, but yet we tend to look at the withdrawal as this really negative outcome without thinking of where this source coming from. And indeed, like we would prefer pregnant people to be on a way to even using unregulated opioids. So it's actually a positive thing in some places. If you, you know, if you're seeing a trend of neonatal abstinence syndrome going up, to know where that source is is is really important. And also, NAS is it's treatable and it's expected.
Ashley Smoke
People who use drugs are often it's often thought that we don't care about our babies, and that's the furthest thing from the truth. A lot of people are actually, like Andi said, seeking treatment because they really care about their babies and they want to see the best outcome. So
Andi Camden
I think that there's other common misconceptions as well that people are just very quick to judgment and to shame people. And we conducted this storytelling project purposely to start to break stigma and to help people understand the lives of people who use opioids in pregnancy or while parenting. And the stories that you can listen to-they're short clips that we have on the dashboard. So as people are clicking through the dashboard, they can hear real life stories, and then you can go to the website for the full versions. And they're so interesting; they're all very different, and you can see all of the systemic and the structural barriers that people face, and the strengths in terms of overcoming all of them are so apparent, and I think that they're really important to share those stories and to always keep that in mind is really important as we're doing this work.
Misty Pratt
Because that leads into my next question about what type of care people are receiving. Do you feel like compassion is typically what people experience when they try to access healthcare or social services in this case?
Ashley Smoke
I've done a lot of projects with people who use drugs, parenting and not parenting, and the consensus I've realized is that people would rather, quite frankly, they would rather die than go to the hospital, like most times. And so, like, there's a lot of judgment, stigma, doctors not knowing how to treat these things, or maybe not having access, like being overworked and not having access to time to even learn all of these different treatments for all these different substance use disorders, and I think it's partially because of stigma and bias, but it's also because our healthcare system really needs help. But we really need more education, more knowledge translation, and we need to go to the doctors and ask them how that information is most accessible to them, and how they can take that information. Because I've heard from a few doctors, they're just so always on the go, and they don't have like the time and the day to sit and do like online learning or you know attend a webinar. So, like, finding out how we can get that information to the healthcare system is very important.
Misty Pratt
And is that where some of the storytelling comes in? Like, does the storytelling then allow a care provider to see all these different perspectives and how complex it is, and perhaps change some of that?
Ashley Smoke
That's the hope, right? Because like they see, I've I've realized that doctors see the hospital and they see what they see, but they don't necessarily see what it's like for people who use drugs to access the healthcare system and all the like once we leave the hospital, then what does that look like? And there's a lot of like miss-missed opportunities and things that aren't thought about when it comes to our care.
Misty Pratt
And so, if you were to imagine what compassionate, evidence based care looks like, what would that be?
Ashley Smoke
So it would be culturally relevant, I think. Like understanding not only like culture, as in like the person's culture, like my indigenous culture, but also the culture of like the people who use drugs. Like drug users have their own culture, so like understanding that and some of the things that they go through would be full and compassionate. I think compassionate care is like meeting people where they're at, not judging. Like there's a questionnaire that someone went through with me when I was giving birth, and they were like making it seem like they didn't want to ask these questions, and like, and the questions that they had the answers to, they didn't re-ask. And I thought that was like very, very respectful, and it was compassionate to my situation as well because there were some really touchy questions there, and to not have to bring up those emotions over and over again while someone's in labor, like that's helpful. Just like simple things like that, making sure people have the knowledge of what's what procedures are happening as they're happening, talking people through things, and not being judgmental about people's relationships and social situations, like when I was in the hospital, there was a lot of nurses that would talk about CAS and like other people's care, and I thought that was very disrespectful. So just like being aware of what you're saying, who you're saying it to, like there's so many different things. Making people comfortable, so when someone's baby might have neonatal abstinence syndrome, making sure they have like their own room in a private area where they don't have to pay $500 for it. That's like one way of being compassionate: parking passes, giving people parking passes when they leave the hospital. Like I could go on and on, but yeah,
Misty Pratt
Some really practical ways that we could be doing things differently.
Andi Camden
Yeah. So the gold standard treatment for people with opioid use disorder in pregnancy is opioid agonist therapy, as we've talked about. So OAT is effective and safe. It prevents withdrawal and reduces cravings for opioids. And when it's provided with integrated care, that is considered the gold standard. So integrated care, I feel, is really important. It's essentially wraparound care where there's a multidisciplinary team that is addressing a number of different health and social needs for a pregnant person, typically in one location. So you're not expecting people to go to all these different appointments in in several different locations. It's meant to be more of like a wraparound service where there can even be care for both the pregnant person and their children. So I think being able to see more integrated care services where abstinence isn't, you know, required would be really useful. And I think even things like flexibility, not having you know appointment times and having drop-in services or appointments, is really helpful as well. And then, yeah, non-judgmental, flexible, non-stigmatizing. I think this project and and working so closely with people with lived experience has shown us how pervasive stigma is, and how it doesn't just impact the person who's been stigmatized. It actually extends to their children as well. So then there's this fear among the fam, like the entire family, to even go to that and connect with the healthcare system because the kids are afraid of the social worker coming and potentially being, you know, separated from their parents. So it's quite stressful, and I feel like these perspectives and this context is so important with this research because when we look at you know ICES data and we want to see oh how many well child visits or people showing up for prenatal care are people showing up for postpartum checkup, and then if you see that there's lower rates, I think it's easy for people to quickly jump to an assumption and stigmatize people. But really, it's it's fear driven. People are afraid to connect with the healthcare system,
Misty Pratt
Yeah, you always hear that term like non-compliant, which just always makes me mad because it's like, well, why are they not showing up? Why are they not compliant? Right? It's there's something there that's causing them not to be comfortable. And I also just want to mention that I love the term wraparound because it just reminds me of a hug. So it just feels like you know someone's just being wrapped all around with so many different partners and care providers, and so yeah.
Andi Camden
And that's part of the goal of this research as well is that because of the data, we can follow people over time and identify like where do we need more wraparound services and where are the more high risk times and what are some of the characteristics associated with that, so then you know maybe there's expanded postpartum care, or you know. So I feel like we can adapt more to the specific situation once we start understanding some of these patterns and trends better.
Misty Pratt
So the dashboard really is building the data to make the case for why we need these changes.
Andi Camden
Yeah, and providing that along with really strong community engagement and collaboration with several different partners.
Misty Pratt
And so, Ashley, what do we risk when we don't include people with lived or living experience in projects like this?
Ashley Smoke
For example, like my records would show that I was on methadone, that I I was we were admitted to the NICU, that we spent like eight weeks in the hospital, but it doesn't show like how the doctor's demeanor changed when he heard my last name was Smoke, or when I had to advocate for an epidural, or when like the separation, like how that affected our bonding, and like how the experience affected the trust that I had in the healthcare system. So I think it helps us ask questions differently, and ask different questions. Like it helps us see like were the parents treated respectfully? Are they included in decisions? Were the babies separated? Did- was there fear of child welfare? Did stigma influence you know people's experiences? Did the care teams understand the more current approaches to neonatal withdrawal? Like, there's all these different things, and meaningful involvement of people who use drugs is like what I strive for. So, like it's not just enough to have like stories; it has to be more than stories. It has to be like involving people from the from early onset, like even in proposal writing, paying people fairly, making sure that people have like real decision making power and can help make decisions in projects and in policy, and supporting people to participate with like childcare or travel reimbursements or whatever it is, and making sure that we're leading what questions are being asked, and what research is being done, and what outcomes are selected, and what recommendations are chosen, and how we talk about things like what language is used, and how that information is interpreted and shared. So, and it's really more like I was saying this just yesterday. Projects that I've worked on have always been better off with community participation and engagement. I don't think any project that I've been on that didn't have an advisory or didn't have someone like with lived experience, multiple people with lived experience working on it. That like those projects always come out so much more thoughtful, so much more relatable, accessible. It's just so important by like us being able to learn about like all of the different research out there and all of the stats and recommendations and whatever, it helps us to go into our communities and teach that to folks who wouldn't be able to receive that information in other ways. It really helps the word of mouth in the community to have, like someone like me, go to Andi and get all of this information. And when I can go back to the community members, they then take that information and they're like one thing I've learned about people who use drugs is they love information, and if you tell if you tell them about you know this stat and it's like "isn't isn't this statistic outrageous" or whatever, they will go and like mention that to their friend, and their friend goes and mentions it to their friend, and then that word of mouth kind of helps the knowledge translate and kind of go around the community, so that's one of the really important pieces of having people with lived experiences, like reaching the community in places that I don't think researchers necessarily go all the time.
Andi Camden
And it actually also goes the other way. So we have learned about things we should be looking at and studying that are important from the advisory and from our peer researchers. For example, like the unregulated drug supply. So medetomidine is an adulterant that's in the existing supply right now, and because we have peer researchers who are supporting pregnant people and in labor and delivery we've learned about what that looks like and how much more severe withdrawal is. So now, one of the studies that we've just designed is is really looking at that. So there's benefits both ways.
Misty Pratt
Yeah, it sounds like a really positive experience. So going back to the dashboard, you mentioned Manitoba and Ontario, and you will be launching some other provinces soon. So, were there any other obstacles your team faced in trying to develop this standardized pan-Canadian dashboard?
Andi Camden
Yes. So, while Canada has a universal healthcare system, healthcare is delivered provincially or territorially, which means that every province collects different information. They use slightly different coding systems, which is really fun. So there's challenges in terms of harmonizing it. Also, the years of availability differ, so you really have to try and line up time periods as well as definitions to really be able to harmonize it. And I'd say one of the challenges we've encountered is really just about time. Like it takes a lot of time to be able to access data from other provinces. So at the moment we have Ontario and Manitoba on the dashboard, as I mentioned, but we'll be adding data for Alberta, BC, and Saskatchewan, and then the greater goal of all of this is really to be able to include all provinces and territories once data infrastructure develops that we need.
Misty Pratt
And would this hopefully at some point lead into guideline development then across the board?
Andi Camden
Yes, absolutely. We hope that this information will be used for guidelines for sure. So, for children with prenatal opioid exposure, right now there's guidelines around neonatal care. There's guidelines around withdrawal, but after the neonatal period, there's some guidelines like we should connect people to community resources. But we think as the evidence develops, there's really a need to have stronger recommendations to support children's health and development, and as well as pregnant people. So we've heard from our advisory that in pregnancy, you know, they're offered all these services and care, and then at the birth, the services just drop off for the mom, and the focus is on the newborn. So we have clinical practice guidelines as well for pregnancy and for the traditional postpartum period. But really thinking about after the six weeks post birth, what about parents then, and how are we supporting people then? And there's you know a lot of stresses in the postpartum period. So I hope that we can also build stronger supports for an extended postpartum period for people.
Misty Pratt
Yeah, six weeks is nothing. I don't think I felt alive after six weeks.
Andi Camden
Yeah, I didn't either.
Misty Pratt
Yeah,
Andi Camden
My daughter had colic too, so it was like three months to feel like a, you know, regular person again.
Misty Pratt
Same, yes. So, what else are you both excited about coming up in terms of the project, or not even CPOP necessarily? Maybe like your role as a peer researcher, what do you- what are you excited for in the future?
Ashley Smoke
I think I'm excited to see the future of like what the dashboard can be, and I had a question the other day from the Ministry of Health about like what this dashboard is going to look like. Is it going to be like annually updated? And like they they had me thinking like, oh, what could we really like accomplish one day with this dashboard, and how could we, how could it evolve into something that's like really useful and consistent for people? And so, I'm excited to see the future of the dashboard, and just like these other creative, because I'm all about creative projects and like ones that are outside of the norm, so like, what else can we come together to do to change minds and to share stories? I think that that's what I'm excited for.
Misty Pratt
Yeah, maybe involving some of the healthcare providers themselves.
Andi Camden
Yeah, we could have some opportunities where, and the body maps could be shared between advisories as well, because we also have an advisory group of like clinical and policymakers.
Misty Pratt
Anything else you're excited about, Andi?
Andi Camden
I'm excited to add data for Alberta, BC, and Saskatchewan, and to really start to look at different provincial differences. So there's a number of differences that we know about in the provinces. So BC has universal access to OAT, for example. Manitoba requires prescriptions for low dose codeine products, which the other provinces don't. Manitoba and Alberta also all of their developmental screening is done through the public health system, which is a bit different as well, so I think that there's an opportunity for us to start learning from the different provinces and really starting to dig in. I'm also looking forward to our knowledge translation activities and when we can start producing, you know, more infographics and more creative projects. And then our goal is really to add all provinces and territories, and to start looking at the long-term health outcomes. So I'm I'm excited to keep working together and also seeing what we can do with this and how impactful it can be.
Misty Pratt
Well, I really look forward to seeing where this is going, and I just want to thank both of you so much for being here today and sharing your experiences and your expertise.
Andi Camden
Thank you so much for having us.
Ashley Smoke
Yeah, thank you.
Misty Pratt
Thanks for joining me for this episode of In Our VoICES. Check out the show notes for links to research and any other information that we've referenced in this episode. A reminder that the opinions expressed in this podcast are not necessarily those of ICES. Please be sure to follow and rate us on your favorite podcast app. If you have feedback or questions about anything you've heard on In Our VoICES, please email us at communications@ices.on.ca, and we will get back to you. All of us at ICES wish you strong data and good health.