2022
To provide technical support to the elaboration of the Local Plan for the Prevention of Addictions and Problematic Use of Screens of Mataró.
Episteme collaborated with the City Council of Mataró and the Diputació de Barcelona to develop the new Local Plan for the Prevention of Addictions and Problematic Screen Uses (2023-2027). Prevention Plans for addiction prevention with or without substances are essential tools for planning public health policies in municipalities and ensuring decent living conditions for the entire population. In this way, the Prevention Plans help to configure a community strategy against addictions, both preventively and in terms of intervention and addressing addictive behaviors, which is why they are very useful for all citizens, regardless of whether they are people in a situation of addiction or not.
Episteme offered technical consulting services specialized in addictions in order to develop a Local Plan for the Prevention of Addictions and Problematic Screen Uses that would be sensible and adapted to the needs of the municipality of Mataró. To do so, we elaborated the diagnosis of the real situation of substance use and screen use among the youth of Mataró. To do so, we used a series of quantitative and qualitative techniques that allowed us to obtain a cartography of the reality that Mataró was going through at that time. We conducted 393 surveys, 13 interviews and 3 focus groups over a period of four months. In addition, we collected quantitative indicators from CASO (Center for Attention and Monitoring of Drug Addiction), Local Police and Mossos d’Esquadra.
Once the fieldwork was completed, we drafted the results of the needs assessment in a total of 183 pages. Based on the main conclusions drawn, we drafted the main objectives that Mataró needed to address over the next five years, divided into seven areas of action (education, leisure and recreation, community, health, media, evaluation, and coordination and management). Once the objectives had been agreed with the town council, we presented them to the Plan’s technical committee. The objectives were prioritized according to the needs present in Mataró and, subsequently, we designed the related activities.
The entire process had the support of both the Mataró City Council and the Barcelona Provincial Council, institutions with which we held monthly meetings over a period of one year. Finally, we drafted the Introduction, the Theoretical and Legal Framework and the layout of the whole Plan. The result is a Local Plan for the Prevention of Addictions and Problematic Screen Uses of more than 300 pages that will be the basis for the continuation of the implementation of good policies for prevention, intervention and addressing addictive behaviors in the municipality of Mataró.
Local Prevention Plans, Public Policies, Intervention, Approach, Mataró, Barcelona Provincial Council.
Local plan for the prevention of addictions and problematic use of screens in...