Practical guide for the evaluation of local addiction prevention plans
Year:
2021
2021
To provide a set of tools and knowledge to help demonstrate that preventive actions implemented in the local reality have preventive effects.
The “Practical guide for the evaluation of local plans for the prevention of drug dependence” is a tool that responds to the need to improve the evaluation processes of local plans for the prevention of drug dependence. The Service for Attention to Dependency and Social Vulnerability of the Department of Equality and Social Sustainability of the Diputació de Barcelona has first-hand knowledge of the difficulties faced by local authorities in terms of evaluation, having found that most professionals perceive evaluation as a complex and difficult process that requires specialised knowledge. The guide aims to change this negative perception, making evaluation a relatively simple and enriching process that allows for the implementation of quality preventive actions. In quantitative terms, the preventive offer is exceptional. However, we still do not know the preventive quality of the vast majority of programmes, because it is difficult to answer the question, based on solid evidence: is the prevention we are doing really preventive? For almost all preventive interventions, the answer is “we don’t know”, because it is impossible to know how much we have reduced the impact of risk factors in the target population and how much we have increased protective factors. The lack of an answer is largely due to the fact that drug prevention is framed within the traditional perspective of social intervention. A perspective that focuses on the articulation of a large number of actions, but for various reasons we do not know to what extent the preventive activity produces the desired effects. Living with the question of whether prevention is prevention puts us in a position of vulnerability for two reasons:
We have the right amount of prevention. This guide is the tool for quality accreditation.