Vicky Carlisle was recently awarded an SSA fellowship. She will be co-producing a practical intervention that tackles stigma in community pharmacies – helping more people to stay engaged in life-saving treatment and improving experiences for both patients and professionals.
Vicky Carlisle is a BPS Chartered Psychologist and Research Fellow in Behavioural Science at Bristol Medical School, University of Bristol. Vicky’s journey into addiction science began after volunteering for Addaction (now ‘With You’) in Cornwall. She went on to study for a BSc in Experimental Psychology as a mature student, followed by a PhD exploring facilitators and barriers to recovery within opioid agonist treatment.
Centring lived experience
Vicky’s work focuses on lived experience, co-production, and stigma reduction. As a trained facilitator, she specialises in approaches that centre the voices of people who are often excluded from research and service design. A key part of this work is ‘Voice of the Voiceless’, a Bristol-based lived experience group that Vicky founded and continues to lead.
During her SSA fellowship, Vicky will co-develop an evidence-based intervention to reduce stigma experienced by people receiving opioid agonist treatment in community pharmacies.
Around 300,000 people in the UK use heroin or crack cocaine. Opioid agonist treatment, including medications such as methadone and buprenorphine, is highly effective: it reduces drug-related deaths, prevents HIV and hepatitis C transmission, and improves quality of life. Despite these benefits, almost half of those who could benefit from treatment are not engaged in it, and 77% of people who begin treatment leave before completion. Stigma is consistently identified as a major barrier to accessing and remaining in care.
Hopefully by improving treatment and making it less stigmatising, it will be more attractive for people to remain in methadone and buprenorphine treatment, and we know that they’re safest when they’re in treatment.
Addressing stigma in substance use treatment
In England, opioid agonist treatment medications are typically dispensed through community pharmacies, often under daily supervised consumption arrangements. As a result, pharmacy staff are among the healthcare professionals with whom people receiving opioid agonist treatment have the most frequent contact. However, many pharmacy staff receive limited training in working with people who have experienced trauma, marginalisation, and social exclusion. This can contribute to stigmatising interactions that discourage people from engaging with treatment.
Working alongside ‘Voice of the Voiceless’, Vicky will develop an intervention to reduce stigma in pharmacy-based opioid agonist treatment delivery. The project will begin with a scoping review to identify existing evidence on pharmacy-related stigma and interventions used in comparable healthcare settings. She will then conduct interviews with pharmacy staff and people receiving opioid agonist treatment to explore their experiences, challenges, and ideas for improvement. Finally, she will bring together lived experience experts, pharmacy staff, and treatment providers to co-design practical training and resources that address the needs of both service users and professionals.
I would really like to think that the work that I’ve done has made a difference in real people’s lives. If I can see a world in which people who are struggling with addiction and substance use are treated with compassion, that’s what I’d like to see by the end of my career.
Vicky’s work aims to improve the experiences of people receiving opioid agonist treatment and support them to remain in treatment. It will also benefit pharmacy staff by helping to reduce conflict, improve communication, and lessen workplace stress. The resulting intervention will be ready for testing in a future pilot study, with the potential for national implementation and international adaptation. Ultimately, the research will support government ambitions to eliminate HIV and hepatitis C transmission by 2030 and reduce drug-related deaths.
by Fiona Hughes
The SSA supports careers in addiction research through funding bursaries for postgraduate study and professional development, pre-doctoral support for the development of PhD applications, PhD studentships, post-doctoral support for the development of fellowship applications, and fellowships. The current round of applications for PhD studentships and fellowships will close on 30 July 2026.
