About Us
Institute for Research and Development “Utrip” (shortly UTRIP) is a non-governmental and a non-profit research institute. Aims of UTRIP are the development, research, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of programmes in the field of youth risk behaviour prevention, addiction prevention, health promotion and healthy lifestyle etc. It is involved in several European research and educational projects, co-financed by the European Commission. It actively cooperates within the European research network in the field of youth risk behaviours (IREFREA), international network for healthy and safer nightlife (Club Health), European Alcohol Policy Network (APN), European Alcohol Policy Research Alliance (AMPHORA), Eurocare (European network of NGOs in the field of alcohol policy), European network for improving addiction prevention by using the internet, telematics and other ICT-based products (Prevnet) and project on promotion of personal and social skills among socially unprivileged people (ProSkills). UTRIP is the coordinator of the project “Club Health – Healthy and Safer Nightlife of Youth” which is co-financed by the European Commission (Health Programme) and which started in April 2009.
Who we are
Matej Košir, Director (matej@institut-utrip.si )
Matej Košir is the Director of the Institute of Research and Development “Utrip”. Expertise and experience: He was a senior adviser and project manager at the Government Office for Drugs and the Ministry of Health for 9 years (2000-2009). He was a policy analyst and researcher at the Ministry of Interior for 4 years (1996-2000). He is a volunteer and member of local non-governmental association for youth and Local Action Group (LAG) for addiction prevention in the Municipality of Grosuplje for last 7 years (2001-2008). He was a national coordinator for alcohol policy at the Ministry of Health (2006-2009). He is a national coordinator for implementation of laws in the field of drugs (ELDD project of the European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction – EMCDDA) (2002-2008) and EDDRA / best practices manager (also project of EMCDDA) (2002-2008).
He is a core member of different European research and project development networks (e.g. IREFREA – www.irefrea.org, Prevnet – www.prevnet.net, Pro-Skills – www.pro-skills.eu etc.). In December 2006 he was appointed as a member of interministerial working group on road safety (he is responsible for drink and driving issues). In January 2008 he was appointed as WHO national data co-ordinator for the road safety global report. He is a member of the European Alcohol Policy Network (EAPN) and new Alcohol Policy Research Alliance (AMPHORA). He was a member of Steering Committee of the Club Health conferences in 2006 (Piran, Slovenia) and 2008 (Ibiza, Spain).
He is an author or co-author of many scientific articles, books and papers. He was a plenary speaker on many conferences, seminars and workshops and he also organised some important national events in the field of addiction prevention and alcohol policy (e.g. national conferences on community-based addiction prevention, conference on alcohol policy etc.). He is a project coordinator of the European project “Club Health – Healthy and Safer Nightlife of Youth”, co-financed by the European Commission (Health Programme). In the field of evaluation he has many experiences. Especially as EDDRA Manager for Slovenia (project of EMCDDA) he evaluated several projects and programmes in Slovenia and developed several evaluation instruments which are published in EIB (Evaluation Instruments Bank of the EMCDDA). He is also developing evaluation tools and instruments for evaluation of the projects in the field of alcohol in cooperation with the Ministry of Health.
Sanela Talić, Secretary-General ( sanela@institut-utrip.si )
Sanela Talić is the Secretary-General of the Institute of Research and Development “Utrip”. She is a pedagogue and mainly a project manager for education and training programmes and projects for risk target groups. She is involved in two international lifelong learning projects. She is also a researcher and is skilled in organisational and communication skills and in processing data from different local surveys on youth risk behaviour.