The Emerging Drugs Network of Australia (EDNA) and EDNA-Vic: illicit drug intoxications in emergency departments informing a national early warning system in Australia

In response to the evolving threat of illicit substance use in Australia, public health bodies and advisory committees called for an enhanced public health response including greater visibility related to community illicit drug use, particularly focusing on new psychoactive substances. The Emerging Drugs Network of Australia- Victoria (EDNAV) provides a clinical registry collecting high quality clinical and analytical data from ED illicit drug presentations, combined with a multi-disciplinary expert team to analyse registry data and provide intelligence to a state illicit drug EWS, with contribution to the national Emerging Drugs Network of Australia (EDNA) project. This presentation will provide an overview of the state system and the national project, the discordance between reported exposure and analytical confirmation of drugs in ED presentations, and detections of particular concern that have led to public health alerts as the result of registry intelligence.

Associate Professor Jennifer Schumann is Head of the Drug Intelligence Unit at the Victorian Institute of Forensic Medicine and Monash University’s Department of Forensic Medicine. She is a forensic pharmacologist and toxicologist, with over two decades of experience interpreting the involvement of alcohol and other drugs in death. Jennifer is an Associate Investigator and Public Health Lead on the NHMRC funded project, the Emerging Drugs Network of Australia (EDNA), and Forensic Lead on the state based project, EDNA-Vic (EDNAV). Jennifer led the world’s first research program on coward punch assaults in partnership with the Stop the Coward Punch Campaign, which has been instrumental in reducing deaths and increasing education and awareness in Australia. She has received a number of awards and travel grants in recognition of her research, including a prestigious 2019 Churchill Fellowship. In 2014, Jennifer was a visiting postdoctoral researcher at the Karolinska Institute and National Board of Forensic Medicine, Sweden, and the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Paris, supported by a Victoria Fellowship. Jennifer is Vice President of the Forensic and Clinical Toxicology Association (FACTA) and Editor of The International Association of Forensic Toxicologists (TIAFT) Bulletin. She is also an Adviser for Pill Testing Australia, and Chair of the FACTA Drug Checking Committee, which produced the first guideline for best practice in analytical drug checking. Jennifer’s research has stimulated public debate, engaged media and been directly responsible for changes in Australian policy and practice.