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BBVsim – introducing a computer model of blood borne virus epidemics
Andrew Preston, Exchange Supplies, Neil Hunt, Freelance Researcher and Edmund Chattoe-Brown, Lecturer, Department of Sociology, University of Leicester

Abstract
One of the objectives of the Harm Reduction Works campaign is to improve the understanding of, and response to, the spread of blood borne virus epidemics. As an educational tool to further this aim the authors have developed an 'agent based' computer model designed to help demonstrate and
understand the relationship between the variables that drive bbv epidemics such as injecting equipment coverage, network stability, currrent prevalence.

Writing a computer model raised some interesting questions about our knowledge of injecting drug use – in the workshop we will describe the development of the model, the collaborative educational process the computer modeller, practitioners, epidemiologists, and drug user experts have been
through in trying to answer these questions, and the knowledge gaps and areas for research that have been highlighted.

We will discuss the assumptions that lie behind the simulation, explain how it works, and run the simulation with different starting parameters.

If you bring a laptop, copies will be available for you to load onto your computer and use.

The discussion and feedback in the session will inform the final stages of the model's development and the information that will support it.

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Biographies

Andrew Preston is co-founder of Exchange Supplies, the social enterprise that organises the NCIDU and has played a leading role in working with the field to develop resources to reduce drug related harm, including the recent NTA ‘harm reduction works’ campaigns.

Neil Hunt (MSc Social Research) is an Honorary Senior Research Associate at the European Institute for of Social Services, University of Kent, Honorary Research Fellow with the Centre for Research on Drugs and Health Behaviour, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and Director of Research for the treatment agency KCA (UK). He also works as a freelance researcher and trainer.

A founding director of the UK Harm Reduction Alliance, his work has covered issues including injecting and risk, understanding drug trends, peer influence and young people, clubbers' drug use, human rights and drug user involvement. He developed the 'Break the Cycle' intervention to reduce injecting that has been disseminated nationally by the Department of Health. Currently, he is advising on adaptations of the programme in Canada and within Central and East Europe.

He has completed various commissioned reviews of the evidence base for harm reduction. Recent work has included: work on the effectiveness of 'Quasi-Compulsory Treatments' such as Drug Treatment and Testing Orders; a Department of Health study of 'early exit' from treatment; an evaluation of the distribution of foil packs to promote transitions from injecting within needle and syringe programmes; development of guidance for the operation of drug consumption rooms in the UK; and, the production of national guidance for England on the management of speedballing.

Edmund Chattoe-Brown. Having started my career as an economist, my main interest is in decision-making but I ended up a sociologist because they use more diverse data and theory to understand choices, particularly in groups and organisations. I have used a mixture of methods to study pensioner money management, farmer decisions to accept subsidies and change their farming practices, price setting decisions when small numbers of firms compete, decisions to use drugs and share injecting equipment and how choices can be shaped socially by communication. My main methodology is computer simulation. At present, I am Co-Director of the SIMIAN (http://www.simian.ac.uk) Node of the National Centre for Research Methods, which is intended to promote simulation to the UK social science community using a mixture of training, innovative research and promotion.