ISSUP Spain offers the potential for the field of substance use prevention and treatment to be revolutionized as a field of activity that can be based on evidence, quality standards and good ethical practices.
However, there remains a need for coherence and collaboration between the organizations involved. The challenge is to apply the science, make it accessible and understandable to everyone within the international drug prevention and treatment community. In addition, there is a vital need to professionalize the prevention and treatment workforce, promote evidence-based quality standards and ethical practices, and have that workforce represented by an international organization. ISSUP has been established to meet these needs and challenges.
ISSUP Spain is made up of a multidisciplinary group of professionals with diverse profiles and many years of experience working in different fields of demand reduction, both in the development of public policies and in their practical application and in training and social research.
Involvement in demand reduction is carried out through the implementation of preventive programs in the school, family, leisure time, work and university settings.
Work is also being done to support the implementation of structural and community prevention as an intervention methodology, as well as professional networking for the exchange of evidence-based experiences and knowledge.
ISSUP Spain has as objectives:
- Creation of a national network of professionals in Spain connected and embedded in ISSUP to face old and new challenges in demand reduction, with special emphasis on the challenges that local prevention presents to us in the reality of our country.
- Organization of a territorial structure for prevention, advancing in the creation of a basic national model like the existing one in the field of care.
- Move forward in the creation of municipal prevention plans. Contents and programs linked to the different municipal delegations that should be committed to reducing demand at the local level.
- Deepen community prevention as an intervention methodology (research/action, participation, objective of social change, inter-sectorality, etc.)
- Promote the exchange of knowledge through this network of entities and professionals in addiction prevention whose activity is based on scientific evidence, quality criteria, ethical principles and efficacy.
- Maximize incidence in political instances as a strategy for transferring scientific knowledge to the decision-making sphere and the possibilities of establishing participation platforms in the design of public policies free of conflicts of interest, for the application of accreditation systems for programs and professionals that ensure rigor, quality and good practices in prevention, treatment and social integration
- Strengthen a network of researchers who promote research-action projects to generate transfer from scientific evidence to the applied field.
To learn more about ISSUP Spain contact: issupespana [at] gmail [dot] com (issupespana[at]gmail[dot]com)