{
  "abstract": "Policing is increasingly understood as a structural determinant of health, yet the social epidemiology of police contact remains limited by limitations to variable-centered measurement which may not capture the complexity of exposure. We aim to address this gap in a cohort of people who use drugs, a population facing disproportionate and consequential police contact, using person-centered methods to examine qualitatively distinct exposure profiles. We applied latent class analysis to 11 police contact indicators among a longitudinal cohort of people who use drugs in Baltimore, Maryland (N = 486) and estimated associations between baseline police-contact class and health outcomes at 6-month follow-up using BCH-weighted logistic regression with cluster-robust standard errors. We identified three classes: minimal contact (64%), routine enforcement (25%), and violent enforcement (11%), the latter characterized by high surveillance alongside violence, coercion, and paradoxically, police assistance. After adjustment, those in the violent enforcement class had increased odds of nonfatal overdose at follow-up (aOR 3.23, 95% CI 1.78-5.87), while those in the routine enforcement class had higher odds of injection drug use (aOR 2.85, 95% CI 1.56-5.23) and lower odds of HIV testing (aOR 0.58, 95% CI 0.39-0.85). These findings demonstrate that police contact comprises qualitatively distinct typologies associated with distinct downstream health consequences among people who use drugs, and point to a need for longitudinal research to elucidate the mechanisms through which each operates. Implications of the co-occurrence of severe enforcement and police assistance among the most impacted individuals for reforms which aim to mitigate harmful police contact on population health are discussed.",
  "abstract_shown": true,
  "affiliations": [
    "Department of Epidemiology, New York University School of Global Public Health, New York, New York, United States",
    "Department of Health, Behavior and Society, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Baltimore, Maryland, United States"
  ],
  "article_type": "research article",
  "arxiv": null,
  "author_total": 8,
  "authors": [
    {
      "affs": [
        0,
        1
      ],
      "name": "Saba Rouhani"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        0
      ],
      "name": "Mehrdad Khezri"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        1
      ],
      "name": "Kristin E. Schneider"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        1
      ],
      "name": "Catherine A. Tomko"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        1
      ],
      "name": "Laura N. Sisson"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        1
      ],
      "name": "Emily M. Martin"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        1
      ],
      "name": "Danielle F. Nestadt"
    },
    {
      "affs": [
        1
      ],
      "name": "Susan G. Sherman"
    }
  ],
  "bibtex": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/6zbzwasntafn2.bib",
  "cited_by": 0,
  "doi": "10.1016/j.socscimed.2026.119841",
  "fulltext_url": "https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC13724110/",
  "id": "6zbzwasntafn2",
  "issns": [
    "0277-9536",
    "1873-5347"
  ],
  "landing_url": "https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2026.119841",
  "language": "en",
  "licence": "CC-BY",
  "licence_label": "CC BY",
  "licence_source": "journal",
  "licence_url": "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/",
  "metadata_licence": null,
  "native_subjects": [
    [
      "heading",
      "Article"
    ],
    [
      "openalex",
      "2713|HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk"
    ]
  ],
  "openalex": "W7213671724",
  "pdf_url": null,
  "pmcid": "PMC13724110",
  "pmid": "42784854",
  "published": "2026-09-19",
  "publisher": null,
  "ris": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/6zbzwasntafn2.ris",
  "sources": [
    {
      "first_seen": "2026-11-04T12:22:37Z",
      "native_id": "PMC13724110",
      "source": "pmc",
      "url": "https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2026.119841"
    }
  ],
  "subjects": [
    {
      "field": "medicine",
      "origin": "openalex:2713|HIV, Drug Use, Sexual Risk",
      "subfield": "epidemiology-public-health"
    }
  ],
  "title": "Surveillance, Violence, and Assistance: Distinct Typologies of Police Contact and Prospective Health Outcomes Among People Who Use Drugs",
  "title_text": "Surveillance, Violence, and Assistance: Distinct Typologies of Police Contact and Prospective Health Outcomes Among People Who Use Drugs",
  "type": "peer-reviewed",
  "updated_at": "2026-11-05T12:20:48Z",
  "url": "https://research.draconitic.com/paper/6zbzwasntafn2",
  "venue": "Social science & medicine (1982)",
  "versions": []
}