ISSUP Spain was established as a ISSUP National Chapter in 2021. It is led by a multidisciplinary group of professionals from Spain dedicated to the field of drugs from prevention to insertion and social research, whose members have vast experience in addressing substance use .
As the National Chapter develops, it is planned to create an organization of this multidisciplinary group made up of a presidency, vice-presidency, secretary and members to review the plan of actions, the construction of the Spanish network of professionals as well as communication and exchange between associates. This organization will be renewed annually.
The National Chapter of ISSUP Spain is very focused on the field of prevention, since within the subject of addictions it has historically been the one that has lacked the necessary support to be developed with the rigor it requires, unlike other fields of equal importance such as treatment and harm reduction and, to a lesser extent, social integration.
Those of us who have dedicated ourselves to prevention for years know that the lack of resources (both human and financial), to establish preventive activities in a territory has been the common denominator. In the same way, the isolation that technicians dedicated to prevention have suffered has led some to develop mechanisms of agglutination and coordination with their counterparts in nearby areas, establishing social networks for exchange, communication groups through WhatsApp or other means to maintain a line of contact that would strengthen their interventions in the absence of clear and firmly established guidelines.
These and some others are the basis of interest in the creation of the National Chapter of ISSUP in Spain. ISSUP has provided us with the structure we needed to start moving in a direction that we hope to bring to fruition in the not too distant future.
Our objectives are very clear:
- Obtain a catalog of evidence-based prevention programs, in line with the Good Practices Portal of the National Plan on Drugs and that of the European Observatory for Drugs and Drug Addiction, establishing and defining very clearly what prevention means and what is left out of the area.
- Make these programs known and promote their application at the national level
- Train professionals so that they are capable of implementing these programs with the coherence and rigor that they require, attending to the training and research curricula, accredited both nationally and internationally.
- Achieve a territorial organization that guarantees the application of programs (based on evidence) in an equitable and rational manner throughout the national territory that guarantees a stable (population/geographical) ratio of prevention professionals
- Obtain a stable source of financing both for the maintenance of prevention personnel and for the maintenance of the activities carried out, regardless of government changes and other contextual contingencies.
- Promote a network of researchers who promote action-research projects to generate transfer from scientific evidence to the applied field and can evaluate and guarantee the effectiveness and efficiency of the actions carried out in the different territories, as well as establish reliable and reliable observatories locally qualified in the field of addictions.
- Promote the preparation of a State Information System on Prevention, which collects the preventive activity carried out in Spain in an updated and accessible manner and serves as a basis for continuous evaluation and improvement.
- Promote 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 European and international quality standards, as well as accreditation systems for programs and professionals that ensure rigor, quality and good practices in prevention, treatment and social integration.
- Strengthen the current network of local prevention plans and encourage the creation of new ones based on population criteria, so that they become fundamental resources for the implementation and extension of programs based on evidence and good practices.
- Generate an exchange of knowledge through this National Chapter, not only in our territory but with other countries, both Latin American and European and from other continents, which helps to face the new challenges that arise in the field of addictions, with special emphasis on the field of prevention.
Directory 2022 – 2023
- Otger Ametller Gutiérrez
- Bartolomé Pérez Gálvez
- Alfonso Rodriguez de Arellano
- Patricia Ros García
- Manuel Isorna Folgar
- Antonio Rial Boubeta
- Víctor Villanueva Blasco
- Jesús Cartelle