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Public health experts and advocates have long raised concerns about the pandemic preparedness of prison systems worldwide – an issue that became increasingly salient at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. People in prison experience poorer health outcomes compared to the general population, making timely access to adequate health services in prison critical for their health and wellbeing. This study aims to identify the extent of the literature on initial changes in mental health and substance use services for people in prison during the COVID-19 pandemic, summarize and synthesize the findings and identify areas in need of further study.

The authors conducted a review of the academic literature published internationally in English between 2019 and December 1, 2020 to describe the disruptions and adaptations to mental health and substance use services in prisons during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The authors found that mental health and substance use services in prisons around the world were widely disrupted due to the COVID-19 pandemic – predominantly consisting of the complete suspension of services, discontinuation of transfers to off-site treatment sites and limitations on service capacity. Adaptations ranged from virtual service delivery and changes to treatment dispensation processes to information sessions on overdose prevention.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first review to examine the nature and extent of the literature on delivery of mental health and substance use services in prisons during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The purpose of this paper is to compare the use of drugs and alcohol by Indigenous and non-Indigenous prisoners and examine relevant treatment in Australian prisons.

Prison authorities were surveyed about alcohol and drug use by prisoners prior to and during imprisonment and drug and alcohol treatment programs in prison. The literature was review for information on alcohol and drug use and treatment in Australian prisons.

In 2009, over 80 percent of Indigenous and non-Indigenous inmates smoked. Prior to imprisonment, many Indigenous and non-Indigenous inmates drank alcohol at risky levels (65 vs 47 percent) and used illicit drugs (over 70 percent for both groups). Reports of using heroin (15 vs 21 percent), ATS (21 vs 33 percent), cannabis (59 vs 50 percent) and injecting (61 vs 53 percent) were similarly high for both groups. Prison-based programs included detoxification, Opioid Substitution Treatment, counselling and drug free units, but access was limited especially among Indigenous prisoners.

Drug and alcohol use was a significant issue in Australian prisons. Prisoners were over five times more likely than the general population to have a substance use disorder. Imprisonment provides an important opportunity for rehabilitation for offenders. This opportunity is especially relevant to Indigenous prisoners who were more likely to use health services when in prison than in the community and given their vast over representations in prison populations.

Given the effectiveness of treatment in reducing re-offending rates, it is important to expand drug treatment and especially culturally appropriate treatment programs for Indigenous inmates.

Very little is known about Indigenous specific drug and alcohol programs in Australian prisons.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of offence type, prior imprisonment and various socio-demographic characteristics on mortality at 28 and 365 days following prison release.

Using whole-population linked, routinely collected administrative state-based imprisonment and mortality data, the authors conducted a retrospective study of 12,677 offenders released from Western Australian prisons in the period 1994-2003. Cox proportional hazards regression was used to examine the association between mortality at 28 and 365 days post-release and offence type, prior imprisonment, and a range of socio-demographic characteristics (age, gender, social disadvantage and Indigenous status).

Overall, 135 (1.1 per cent) died during the 365 days follow-up period, of these, 17.8 per cent (n=24) died within the first 28 days (four weeks) of their index release. Ex-prisoners who had committed drug-related offences had significantly higher risk of 28-day post-release mortality (HR=28.4; 95 per cent CI: 1.3-615.3, p=0.033), than those who had committed violent (non-sexual) offences. A significant association was also found between the number of previous incarcerations and post-release mortality at 28 days post-release, with three prior prison terms carrying the highest mortality risk (HR=73.8; 95 per cent CI: 1.8-3,092.5, p=0.024). No association between mortality and either offence type or prior imprisonment was seen at 365 days post-release.

Post-release mortality at 28 days was significantly associated with offence type (with drug-related offences carrying the greatest risk) and with prior imprisonment, but associations did not persist to 365 days after release. Targeting of short-term transitional programmes to reduce preventable deaths after return to the community could be tailored to these high-risk ex-prisoners.

Globally, hepatitis C treatment uptake is lower among people who are homeless or unstably housed compared to those who are housed. Understanding and addressing this is essential to ensure no one is left behind in hepatitis C elimination efforts. This study aims to explore peoples’ experiences of unstable housing and health care, and how these experiences influenced engagement in hepatitis C treatment.

Purposive sampling was used to recruit people with lived experience of injection drug use, hepatitis C and unstable housing in Melbourne, Australia. In-depth semistructured interviews were conducted and a case study approach with interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to identify personal experiential themes and group experiential themes.

Four people were interviewed. The precarious nature of housing for women who inject drugs was a group experiential theme, however, this did not appear to be a direct barrier to hepatitis C treatment. Rather, competing priorities, including caregiving, were personal experiential themes and these created barriers to treatment. Another group experiential theme was “right place, right time, right people” with these three elements required to facilitate hepatitis C treatment.

There is limited research providing in-depth insight into how personal experiences with unstable housing and health care shape engagement with hepatitis C treatment. The analyses indicate there is a need to move beyond a “one size fits-all” approach to hepatitis C care. Instead, care should be tailored to the needs of individuals and their personal circumstances and regularly facilitated. This includes giving greater attention to gender in intervention design and evaluation, and research more broadly.

With the explosion of digital technologies in contemporary daily life, fuelled by a pandemic and remote working, online learning and shopping and the proliferation of social platforms, much remains nebulous about the opportunities these technologies hold for social marketers beyond their previously documented use as communication and promotion tools. This paper aims to provide a rich examination of the variety of digital technologies used within social marketing and establish the scale of integration between digital technologies and social marketing.

Following systematic literature review procedures, a systematic literature review through eight databases was conducted. The systematic review focussed on the assessment of social marketing studies that incorporated a wide range of mature and emerging digital technologies such as the internet, mobile platforms and social media channels. A total of 50 social marketing studies (2014–2020) were analysed.

The review found that there have been major advancements in the technologies available to social marketers in recent years. Furthermore, the adoption of digital technologies by social marketers has evolved from a communication or promotion function where generic information is pushed to the citizen, towards the use of these technologies for a more personalised design, content and behaviour change intervention. In some studies, the digital technologies were the primary means for interactions and collaborations to take place. The review also found that digital technologies target more than the individual citizen. Digital technologies are used to target multi-level stakeholders, policy makers and partners as part of behavioural change interventions.

Only two previous reviews have synthesised digital technologies and their use in social marketing. This review provides a recent depiction of the range and scale of integration within social marketing. Specifically, it demonstrates the expansion beyond a persuasive application to their use for research, segmentation and targeting, collaboration and co-creation, the product and facilitator of service delivery. Finally, this review provides a heat map to illustrate the integration between digital technologies and key concepts and criteria within social marketing.