Tag: prevention

A Global Initiative for the Prevention of Drug Use

Posted on by Milutin

From the Dianova news

Addiction prevention is one of the pillars of drug demand reduction policies. At present, however, this area has not received the attention it requires, in terms of drug policies, public investment, research, etc.

In June 2023, some twenty international experts met at a consultation organized by the Proyecto Hombre association in the Spanish city of Oviedo. The consultation focused on the various addiction prevention strategies (including drugs and non-substance related addictions) and the challenges to be met in this area. The consultation led to the notion of promoting an initiative aimed at raising the profile of these initiatives and putting forward concrete recommendations to strengthen the field of prevention worldwide.

Following the creation of an ad hoc working group, a draft declaration was produced, with the collaboration of over 150 experts participating on a voluntary basis.

The “Declaration of Oviedo” has recently been published, and civil society organizations have been given the opportunity to sign and support the initiative. The declaration will be officially presented at the next annual session of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs in March 2024. It should be emphasized that the greater the number of signatures in support of the declaration, the greater its impact will be. We therefore encourage civil society organizations to read and sign the Oviedo Declaration and disseminate it to their contacts and networks.

You may find all the information, the declaration in several languages, as well as the endorsement form, on the Declaration’s official website: https://www.oviedodeclaration.org/

Together, let’s support more effective drug prevention that reaches as many people as possible!

Download the Oviedo Declaration (.pdf document) in: English, Castellano, Français.

 

Webinar on the brain development in adolescence and substance use

Posted on by Milutin

The Slovenian NCD Alliance invites you to a free webinar “The brain development in adolescence and substance use in the context of prevention science, policy & practice“, which will host three of the most important international experts in this field.

The webinar is organized as part of the celebration of World Drug Day (26 June) and the 15th anniversary of the UTRIP Institute (23 June). Priority for registration and participation will be given to the participants from the South Eastern European countries, especially those from Balkan region.

The seminar will be conducted in the form of a Webinar via ZOOM on Wednesday, 23 June 2021 from 15.00 to 18.00 (CEST time zone), and will be held in English.

The deadline for registrations is Tuesdaz 22 June 2021 via the form following this link˃˃˃. After registration, you will receive an email confirming registration and a ZOOM link for the Webinar.

The seminar is organized within the project “Because alcohol is not milk – advocacy in the field of alcohol policy”, which is supported by the “Active Citizens Fund” in Slovenia 2014 – 2021.

Collection of models of good practice

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The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) and the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) Guidance Prevention and control of infectious diseases among people who inject drugs identifies good practice for prevention and control of infectious diseases among people who inject drugs. This guidance aims to support policy makers in Europe to plan adequate, evidence-based, pragmatic, and rationally designed public health responses for the prevention and control of infections among people who inject drugs. It aims at public health programme planners and decision makers working in the fields of infectious diseases, general public health, addiction and mental healthcare, social services, and drug control at national and regional levels.

Published n 2011, the Guidance is currently being updated. In addition to ongoing systematic reviews of peer-reviewed literature, a collection of models of good practice has been initiated by the two agencies, that should add practice-based evidence derived from interventions implemented in real-life, European settings.

The two EU agencies are inviting applications to report models of good practice targeting PWID population aiming to:

  • improve community-based testing
  • increase linkage to care
  • increase adherence to treatment of infection interventions
  • prevention or reduction of infections through successful health promotion approaches

The infections of interest are hepatitis B (HBV), hepatitis C (HCV), HIV and tuberculosis (TB).

Should you or your organisation be interested in reporting a model of good practice that fits the scope of this call, please express your interest following this link>>>.

New issues for monitoring

Posted on by Milutin

Every year in autumn, The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) organises Reitox meeting – the European information network on drugs and drug addiction. The 8th Extended Reitox network meeting was held on 12 November in the EMCDDA premises in Lisbon, Portugal. It brought together representatives from circa 50 countries, including: the Heads of the 30 Reitox national focal points from the 28 EU Member States, Norway and Turkey; representatives from the 6 Western Balkan countries covered by the European Instrument for Pre-Accession Technical assistance project (IPA7) and representatives from 15 European Neighbouring Policy area countries.

This year’s meeting will be dedicated to the topic ‘New issues for monitoring’. The agenda included issues like Drug policy debates: how routine monitoring data used?, Introduction on new proposal of the UNODC Annual Reports Questionnaire (ARQ) and Cannabis: latest developments.

During the session on Prevention of infectious diseases, DPNSEE Executive Director Milutin Milošević presented Situation in the Western Balkan countries. Besides presenting the Network and briefly describing the type of data that are available to us, a detailed view on the situation in the Western Balkan countries was given including prevalence of HIV, HCV, HBV among people who inject drugs, provision of harm reduction services and access to treatment, barriers and challenges and relevant policies in the region.

Participation in the Reitox meeting was an excellent opportunity to present the potential of the Network for partnership and discuss modalities for further cooperation with EMCDDA and national drug agencies

A conference on addiction prevention

Posted on by Milutin

Challenges and perspectives in the field of addiction prevention – the first expert conference about contemporary approaches and models of work with children and youth in Bosnia Herzegovina was held on 26 and 27 of June 2019 in Sarajevo. Association for addiction prevention NARKO-NE within the RIPPO network organised the conference with the support of the Ministry of civil affairs, Ministry of human rights and refugees and Ministry of security.

The conference aimed to focus on the importance of an inter-sectorial approach, to sensitize the general public to problems of addictive and risky behaviours and to contribute to the professionalization and multidisciplinary development of the respective field in Bosnia Herzegovina.

The main conclusion of the Conference is that a joint work, as the society, is needed to create a safe environment, but that there are too much organisations and institutions that work on the issues of prevention and that they are not equally distributed.

Besides plenary inputs and discussions, 18 workshops were offered to participants. Among them, the DPNSEE Executive Director Milutin Milošević run one on Models of addiction prevention on environmental (structural) level. During the workshop, DPNSEE and its member organisations activities on strategies and action plans development and improving legislation on drug policy in countries of South East Europe were presented.

More information about the Conference are available on the website konferencija.prevencija.ba – including all the presentations which will be posted by the end of July.

Milutin with Aleksandra and Milena from “Čovekoljublje”

Transition of TB program in Romania

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Source: Regional Civil Society and Community Support, Coordination and Communication Platform – EECA

35 participants including civil society representatives, CCM members, Global Fund Portfolio Manager, experts from neighbouring countries and representatives of the governmental structures gathered in Bucharest on 13 – 14 of June at a workshop “Transition from the Global Fund support of TB program to national funding: understanding the role, opportunities and priorities for civil society in Romania” to discuss what they can do for a greater sustainability of the country’s responses to the TB and HIV epidemics.

Based on the Global Fund Board’s decision in November 2016 on the allocation of resources for the 2017-2019 allocation period, Romania has been allocated € 4,052,972 for tuberculosis and building resilient and sustainable systems for health. The implementation of this new TB grant in Romania formally started in March 2019 and it is planned to finish its implementation in March 2021. This grant is being considered as the last TB grant for the country to support the transition processes. Although the new Global Fund 2019 Eligibility List does mention Romania as being eligible for TB funding again, yet, the eligibility does not guarantee an allocation, and it is not clear if Romania will be allocated any further funding to support the TB response in 2020 – 2022.

Although Romania is ineligible to receive Global Fund funding for HIV response since 2010 when its last Global Fund HIV grant came to an end, the current “transition grant”, as well as all previous TB grants to Romania, includes a significant component on HIV prevention among key affected populations (KPs). Therefore, civil society mobilization for joint advocacy to ensure the domestic funding of HIV prevention activities among KPs is essential.

At the same time, according to the Global Fund’s Eligibility List 2019 Romania may be eligible for an allocation for HIV/AIDS for non-governmental or civil society organizations if the country demonstrates the barriers to providing funding for interventions for key populations, as supported by the country’s epidemiology. The Global Fund Secretariat will assess whether the criteria have been met at the time of determining allocations for the 2020-2022 allocation period. The decision on the countries‘ allocations within the next 2020-2022 allocation period to be made by the Global Fund Board in November 2019.

Conference: Challenges and perspectives in the field of addiction prevention

Posted on by Milutin

Association for addiction prevention NARKO-NE, within the RIPPO network and in cooperation with the Ministry of civil affairs BiH, Ministry of human rights and refugees BiH and Ministry of security BiH, organises the first expert conference in the field of addiction prevention on 26 and 27 June 2019 in Sarajevo.

The conference wants to focus on the importance of an inter-sectoral approach, to sensitize the general public to problems of addictive and risky behaviours and to contribute to the professionalization and multidisciplinary development of the respective field in Bosnia Herzegovina.

Participants of the conference will have the opportunity to learn about different approaches of addiction prevention in Europe, to exchange good practices, and to learn about mechanisms which ensure the efficiency and quality of interventions themselves.

All information about this event including the process of participant’s registration is available on the website konferencija.prevencija.ba

Registration deadline is 31 May 2019.

EMCDDA added 16 new programmes to online registry

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The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA) has added 16 new programmes to online registry of evidence-based prevention programmes. Xchange, EMCDDA’s project, is an online registry of evidence based prevention programmes. At the moment, it contains 38 programmes, even if it is in pilot phase.

In addition to providing information on the effectiveness of programmes, the registry, available on the EMCDDA Best practice portal, also offers information on the experiences of professionals who have implemented these programmes in individual European countries. This enables decision-makers to assess the ease with which programmes can be implemented in different social, cultural and organisational contexts. It also helps prevention professionals to learn and interact with each other about their experiences with these programmes.

Five of the new programmes focus on substance use prevention and 11 on crime and delinquency prevention.

emcdda

The registry is the centre piece of a growing network of national registries. Through Xchange, an interested visitor can access additional details on a specific programme in the national language within a local registry, or access through a national registry the European implementation experiences of a given programme. A unique feature of Xchange is that it allows national high-ranking programmes to be promoted in this European registry and, inversely, allows international visitors to find more details about local adaptations in national languages.

The Council of the European Union’s Minimum quality standards in drug demand reduction in the EU demands that prevention professionals have access to knowledge on effective prevention programmes. A growing number of programmes are considered effective at reducing substance use and related problems under carefully controlled conditions. However, access to evidence‐based prevention programmes is still limited and they remain under‐utilised compared to prevention strategies with no empirical evidence for effectiveness. Xchange aims to address this challenge by providing access to such programmes.

To explore the new programmes follow this link>>>>

 

 

The need for an organized system for drug policy in Montenegro

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Within the framework of the project ARYSE (At-Risk Youth Social Empowerment), funded by the European Union through the European Commission, NGO Juventas organised the round table „Young people who use drugs in Montenegro“ on 12 November 2018 in Podgorica. The hosts emphasised that there is no systematic commitment in solving the problem of dependence on psychoactive substances in Montenegro and that clarifying the government responsibility is very important. Improving support programs, developing preventive work, in order to help young people who use drugs, must be in coordination with many institutions.

The speakers at the round table were: Marija Milić, Coordinator of the Programme of direct assistance for people who use drugs, NVO Juventas, Milutin Milošević, Executive Director of the Drug Policy Network South East Europe, Ivana Vujović, Executive Director of NGO Juventas, Nebojša Kavarić, Director of the Health Centre in Podgorica, Dr Ljiljana Golubović, the Public Health Institute representative and psychologist, Dijana Milošević, representative of the Institution for Resocialization and Rehabilitation of Drug Addicts Kakaricka gora.

The representatives of local communities from Nikšić, Podgorica, Budva, Bijelo polje, Tivat and Kolašin also took part in the discussion.

It was pointed out that cooperation with official institutions is at an unsatisfactory level. Also, the discussion conclude that there is no systematic plan for dependence on psychoactive substances problem.

The Executive Director of DPNSEE Milutin Milošević gave introductory presentation about models and standards of prevention of psychoactive substances use in Europe and presented concrete examples of drug policy approaches in Croatia, Spain, The Netherlands, Serbia, Sweden and Turkey.

ARYSE project also includes the partner organizations: ARSIS (Albania), Association Margina (Bosnia Herzegovina), HOPS (Macedonia), Labirint (Kosovo), Prevent (Serbia) and Foundation SHL (Germany).
At-Risk Youth Social Emprovement open table