Interviews with four authors of award-winning abstracts at AMERSA 2025Interviews with four authors of award-winning abstracts at AMERSA 2025
Behind the Evidence
Four AMERSA 2025 award winners talk through harm reduction vending machines, equity-focused research consultation, mail-based syringe services, and a VA study comparing opioid tapering, continuation, and buprenorphine. The conversation focuses on practical lessons for addiction clinicians, with an emphasis on stigma reduction, community input, and real-world safety outcomes.
49:30•22 Apr 2026
Award-Winning Addiction Research That’s Changing Everyday Care
Episode Overview
- Harm reduction vending machines in veterans’ housing offered 24/7 access to sterile syringes and wellness items, reduced syringe sharing, and helped normalise safer-use services.
- Including everyday health products alongside safer-use supplies lowered stigma and encouraged broader use of the machines by residents.
- The LEAP model centres Black community members as paid consultants on research projects, providing both practical and challenging feedback that can reshape study aims.
- A mail-based syringe service programme can be run by a very small team if processes are streamlined, technology is used carefully, and participant feedback shapes what goes in each parcel.
- In a VA emulated trial of higher-risk patients, mortality did not clearly differ between continuing opioids, tapering, or switching to buprenorphine, pointing to the need to focus on function and quality of life as well as safety.
“Some veterans were very upset that we were installing a machine with syringes, and then they saw that over time nothing bad happened.”
Gain insights from experts and survivors on how evidence can actually shape day‑to‑day addiction care. Recorded live at AMERSA 2025 in Portland, this episode of *Behind the Evidence* chats with four authors whose abstracts won top honours at the conference. First up, pharmacist Tessa Reif Pennington explains her work on harm reduction vending machines in veterans’ supportive housing.
By placing machines where people live and stocking both safer-use supplies and everyday items like toothpaste and sunscreen, veterans reported saving time and money, feeling safer, and, as Tessa notes, realising that “after a couple months... nothing bad happened.” Syringe sharing dropped, stigma eased, and even sceptical residents started grabbing chapstick. Next, physician-researcher Avik Chatterjee talks about the Lived Experience Advisory Panel (LEAP), designed to make addiction research more equitable for Black patients.
He shares how LEAP consultants offer very practical feedback on recruitment and study design, but also sometimes unsettle researchers’ assumptions – for example, questioning projects where “being on medications is not a goal” for many community members. Harm reduction manager Shelby Arena then shares how a tiny team built a statewide, mail-based syringe service programme in New York.
Building on huge demand for mailed fentanyl test strips, Shelby focuses on trust, flexibility, and listening closely when people say, “they don't need any more band-aids.” The programme shifted from fixed boxes to participant‑chosen supplies and now reaches nearly 200 people across rural and urban areas. Finally, Pujala Gassetti outlines a large VA study comparing three options for patients on long‑term opioid therapy and at higher risk of misuse: continuing opioids, tapering, or switching to buprenorphine.
Using an emulated trial design, her team found no clear difference in mortality between groups, raising important questions about how clinicians and patients weigh safety against pain relief and quality of life. If you’re interested in how research can genuinely inform kinder, smarter addiction care, this conversation offers plenty to chew on.
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