Ethics of Prescribed Safer Supply

Discussion on the ethics of prescribed safer supply. More details to come!

Moderator: Dr. Adrian Guta

Speakers: Dr. Alice Virani and Dr. Daniel Buchman

Dr. Alice Virani is the Executive Director, Clinical Ethics and Spiritual Care Services at PHSA and a Clinical Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Medical Genetics at UBC. In addition to her work at PHSA, Alice is passionate about the role of ethics at a national level and proudly serves on the Inter Agency Advisory Panel on Research Ethics, CIHR’s Advisory Committee on Ethics, and Chairs the Public Health Ethics Consultative Group for the Public Health Agency of Canada. Alice's research interests relate to public health ethics and pediatric bioethics.

Dr. Daniel Buchman is a bioethicist and scientist at the Centre for Addiction and Mental Health (CAMH). He is also an associate professor in the Dalla Lana School of Public Health at the University of Toronto, a member of the University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, and an affiliate scientist in the Krembil Research Institute at the University Health Network. In addition, he is a member of the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Advisory Committee on Ethics. Daniel’s general research interest include ethical issues related to mental health, substance use, and chronic pain. Themes related to stigma, social justice, identity, and compassion feature prominently in his work. His research draws upon a multi-disciplinary toolkit of conceptual and empirical methods, and has been funded by agencies including CIHR, the Mental Health Commission of Canada, and an AMS Healthcare Fellowship in Compassion and Artificial Intelligence. Some of Dr Buchman’s current projects explore ethical issues related to stigma, chronic pain, and neurotechnologies; industry-healthcare relationships and conflicts of interest; opioids; psychedelics; palliative approaches to mental health care, and big data and artificial intelligence. Find Daniel on LinkedIn.

Dr. Adrian Guta (Associate Professor, School of Social Work, University of Windsor) has been conducting critical public health research for nearly two decades. He holds a collaborative in bioethics from the Joint Centre for Bioethics and has published about medical, research, and public health ethics. Since 2020, Dr. Guta has been undertaking a program of research about safer supply program models, the provider and client experience, and regulatory and structural considerations. He has received funding from the Ontario HIV Treatment Network, the Social Science and Humanities Research Council, and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. Finally, he is a 2021 inductee into the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists and Scientists and the 2023 Fulbright Canada Research Chair in Public Health at Johns Hopkins University.