Re-examining the toxic drug crisis through stories

Dr. Sharen Karsten and her team are taking a community-engaged approach to the research.

We are excited to share that Dr. Sharen Karsten, a VIU Recreation and Tourism Management Professor, has just received a 2024 Reach award from Michael Smith Health Research BC. The Reach Program funds teams of researchers and research users to support the dissemination and effective uptake of research evidence. Learn more about the Reach award program.

Learn more about Karsten’s research in this feature story, from this year’s Research Highlights Report!  

Amid BC’s ongoing, toxic drug crisis, a researcher at Vancouver Island University is using an arts-based, community-engaged approach to help people “come together in new ways to imagine and create change.”

Recreation and Tourism Management Professor Dr. Sharon Karsten is a director of Walk With Me, a project that began in 2019 when she was the director of the Comox Valley Art Gallery.

“I witnessed first-hand the impact the drug poisoning crisis was having on our community,” said Karsten. “People we felt strong connections with were passing away, not just around the gallery, but youth in our programs and artists with whom we were working. The experience of being in a community organization and seeing the impact of the crisis from that lens is really what started the project. We wanted to know what a gallery could do to make a change.”

Karsten said she has been told many times by those facing this crisis that the opposite of addiction is connection. A key contributing factor to the crisis – one that is often overlooked – is the rise in “hypercapitalism” and “hyper-individualism.” Essentially, people no longer feel a sense of connection to their communities or a sense of closeness to those within them, she explained. This can lead to feelings of loneliness or isolation and addiction emerges as a way to cope.

Through conversations with AVI Health and Community Services, Island Health and people facing the crisis first-hand, the Walk With Me project was born. The project includes “Story Walks,” where participants don individual headsets and go for a walk while listening to curated stories about people with lived experiences with toxic drugs, putting a human face on the issue. Afterwards, the group meets to talk about the stories they’ve heard and “reflects on the many dimensions underlying this public health crisis.”

Karsten said walking is a useful tool to help people grapple with difficult conversations. Walking allows ideas to kind of tumble in the air and then flow off of your body in a way that you’re still recalling them but you are able to walk through them, she said.

“People who come and witness the stories and participate in the walks often undergo an individual change, and there is a reduction in the stigma around these issues when you are faced with the humanity of people at the heart of this crisis,” said Karsten.

The Reach award follows a 2023 Michael Smith Health Research BC Scholar award, both of which are allowing Karsten to continue this work at VIU and help grow the Walk With Me project. She is developing a learning system in which people with lived experience of the crisis play a strong role in defining the health authority’s response to the crisis.

She said they are rapidly expanding the conversation around Vancouver Island and have a contract to deliver 54 story walks over two years from Port Hardy to Victoria. The team has also released a report with North Island College including some key recommendations from students, staff and faculty around harm reduction and how that institution is preparing people to enter into a world where this crisis is raging.

Four story walks have been hosted on the VIU Nanaimo campus, drawing more than 50 participants. Facilitators developed powerful connections through these walks and look forward to continuing to work with the VIU community to find ways to reduce stigma and create policy and systems change in response to the toxic drug poisoning crisis.