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Co-financed
by the European Commission
DG Health |
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neither
the European Commission nor any person acting on its behalf is liable
for any use made of this information |
Participation
of East European members is financed by
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Expert
group: Data report system – EMCDDA
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| Background
( description of the situation and the field the activity
takes place) |
To
increase drug users’ access to services that help prevent
and reduce health-related harm associated with drug use is an
important objective in public health policy in the European
Union (EU drug strategy 2005-2012). Within a comprehensive,
state-of-the-art system of care for drug users, low-threshold
agencies play the most important role for increasing drug users’
access to care. These agencies are not only points for entering
into contact with populations of drug users that are ‘hidden’,
that are more difficult to reach or have lost contact with the
care system, but are an essential service delivery setting where
drug users benefit from basic health and social care services.
Although all agencies have systems for monitoring types and
level of service delivery in place, reporting is mainly orientated
towards accountability to funding bodies and not for example
towards internal quality-management or towards service planning
and evaluation at national level.
The measurement of extent, availability and coverage of harm
reduction service delivery is complicated by the fact that data
collection tools are usually not standardised, even though very
similar datasets are collected. As harm reduction funding typically
comes from local budgets, data-flow does often not go beyond
this level, which makes it complicated to obtain a reliable
overview at national and subsequently also European level. The
development of this dataset will be comparable to the existing
treatment demand indicator as far as possible. |
| Aims/Goals |
| The
overall aims of the project is to increase the availability
of reliable and comparable data on low-threshold harm reduction
service delivery at local, national and European levels, in
order to provide sound background information for policy planning.
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| Objectives/activities |
Objective
of the project is the development of a draft European data collection
protocol for standardised annual reporting about the activities
carried out and the services delivered by the low-threshold
agency which includes a part for the reporting about the structure
and functioning of the agency.
Activities to be carried out in order to achieve the objectives
include: the definition of objectives of data-collection with
regard to information needs at the planning levels: agency –
local– national – European; the collection and compilation
of already existing questionnaires and other tools used by low-threshold
agencies in EU Member States; the evaluation of the items covered
by these data collection tools; the analysis of their structure;
the development of a standardised data collection template on
low-threshold service delivery for European use; the development
of the technical manual and glossary to accompany the protocol;
the implementation of the draft protocol in low threshold agencies
in selected countries; the evaluation of the pilot test and
the feedback received; and the modification and finalisation
of the European protocol.
Current members of the work-group are a representatives of the
EMCDDA in Lisbon, the Research Institute on Drug Studies (RIDS)
located in Budapest, Institute for Public Health of the Republic
of Slovenia and the Department of Health-Catalunya. |
| Methods |
At
the launch of the project (September 2005), a work plan and
time-table will be drawn up and tasks will be divided among
group members, who will be responsible for fully implementing
the tasks. The main working method will be structured e-mail
discussions and exchange of working documents, probably through
a dedicated website.
E-mail discussions will be moderated by the respective group
member in charge and responsible for the specific task concerned.
The group will hold separate meetings in conjunction with the
Correlation network meetings, and – if necessary –
meet in the interim period for specific technical tasks.
At the project meetings, progress will be reviewed and work
plan and timetable be reviewed. |
| Results/outputs |
| At
the end of the project, a European standardised annual reporting
protocol for low-threshold agencies (incl. technical manual
and glossary) is available, which allows the collection of reliable
and comparable data on service delivery and on the structure
of the agencies and a first evaluation of the pilot implementation
will be prepared. |
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