Stage 5 - Defining the action plan

STAGE 5. Defining the action plan

What steps should be completed?

Step 1: Specify intervention actions

PLACES OF INTERVENTION

The scope of intervention should be consistent with its objectives and also be accessible and comfortable, socially, culturally and physically. When an intervention is more complex, it will be common to place it in different settings.

Prevention and/or risk reduction interventions often take place in settings that are significant for the population, such as schools, places of leisure, workplaces, etc. This makes alliances with the people responsible for these spaces essential to make the intervention possible and prevent their regulations from contradicting the ethical principles of drug interventions. The various areas of action have advantages and disadvantages that are worth considering.

FIELD	ADVANTAGES	DISADVANTAGES
Educational	Highly accessible to the young population. Considerable experience and pedagogical resources.	Indeterminate (or low) tradition of drug interventions. Requirement for strong support by educational agents.
Health	High credibility of professionals with regard to health issues. Access to population with drug-related problems.	Competition with other sectors to tackle drug-related problems. Disagreements with other sectors about approaches to drug problems.
Community	Reinforcement of social norms favourable to non-consumption of drugs. Participation of several agents in the approach to drug problems.	Increased management and participation costs. Reduced population specificity.
Family	Access to the very best agents of socialisation. Strengthening drug approaches made in other areas.	Difficult access to the population.
Mass media	Access to a large and diverse population. Use of a strong impact channel for the population.	Specificity of the preventive approach is reduced. Difficult to control the scope of the intervention in the population.
Leisure spaces	Taking the intervention close to places conducive to drug use.	Incompatibility of norms with approaches to drug-related problems. Possible mistrust and lack of real commitment from entrepreneurs in the sector.

PLACES OF INTERVENTION

Demos