Quality in addiction prevention programs

Main objective:

To offer guidelines, tools, knowledge and recommendations to evaluate, with guarantees and based on standards, the quality of drug and behavioral addiction prevention programs. Proving that the preventive actions carried out, lead to results and preventive impacts on the target groups it addresses..

Summary:

“Prevention” is one of the first topics mentioned in the public debate about drugs and behavioural addictions, but the evidence of what works and what does not work in preventive practice is often overlooked. There are many studies that highlight how most interventions in the field of prevention are not implemented in accordance with Quality Standards, either due to a lack of resources or support in effective and evidence-based interventions, due to the qualitative gap in the education and training of professionals working in the field of prevention or the weak tradition or culture of evaluation in the field of prevention, among others. Without evaluation, it is not possible to determine, for example, which programmes and interventions are effective and/or have a positive and significant impact on preventive action, with the aim that professionals introduce the necessary changes to improve their effectiveness in the view of the data obtained with the evaluation. 

To respond to this situation, the Practical Guide to the Quality of Drug and Behavioural Addiction Prevention Programmes is designed, based on the Quality Standards of the Quality Support System in Drug and Behavioural Addiction Prevention, which is part of the General Directorate of Addictions, HIV, Sexually Transmitted Infections and Viral Hepatitis of the Public Health Agency of the Generalitat de Catalunya. The Guide aims to be a tool that responds to the need to improve the planning, development, and implementation of prevention programmes, based on evidence, through a system for evaluating the quality of these programmes and materials that derive from it, to certify that the preventive actions that are implemented provided preventive results and impacts on the target groups to which they are directed. Specifically, the Guide seeks to promote: 

• The implementation in daily preventive practices of the Quality Standards to achieve the best possible quality in the interventions, improving their effectiveness, efficiency, and impact, among others. The Quality Standards are a resource for those responsible for decision-making in prevention as well as for those involved in the selection, promotion and development of good practices in the different areas of prevention and at the different preventive levels for each of the areas. 
• The evaluation of preventive actions, based on the Quality Standards, as an essential element for any quality programme, with the vision of a continuous process and integrated in the interventions, without being seen as a final process or that it applies only when the preventive actions are finished. The Quality Standards do not provide guidelines for conducting evaluation, but they do suggest the most important considerations when approaching them and understanding programme effects and processes. 

Keywords:

Behavioural addictions; evaluation; drugs; prevention; preventive interventions; quality standards.