Club Health – Healthy and Safer Nightlife of Youth (2009-2012)
The Club Health project, with 20 associated and 16 collaborating partners from 15 EU Member States and Norway, will support the European Commission (EC) in its public health and other related strategies to reduce the social costs and harm associated with nightlife youth risk behaviours. The project aims to reduce diseases (especially addictions and sexually transmitted infections), accidents, injuries and violence among youth with a focus on specific environments of nightlife. The project aims to facilitate more consistent implementation of strategies and laws in the field of youth risk behaviour on the one hand, and increase sensitivity of media, advertising industry and politically relevant actors (e.g. policy and decision makers) on their responsibility for action on the other hand. The project will build on the work of the previous EC co-financed project “Recreational Culture as a Tool to Prevent Risk Behaviours”, and will complement other EC co-financed projects in the field of youth risk behaviour, including “Healthy Nightlife Toolbox” and “Democracy, Cities and Drugs II”. The project is coordinated by UTRIP. More information: www.club-health.eu .
School prevention program EU-Dap
EU-Dap program or program “Unplugged” is the most important part of the school prevention curriculum in the prevention of addiction. Program started in 2004 and begun to develop in seven European countries (Belgium, Spain, Austria, Italy, Germany, Greece and Sweden) and is currently expanding rapidly across Europe and beyond (Eastern Europe, Middle East, the Arab part of Africa) . The program was designed based on the model of integrated social impact and is interactive, combining life skills and normative beliefs (young people develop their thinking, ideas and values that have a significant impact media, music, friends and film, these influences are often in conflict with the values that the young learn at home or at school). The target group consists of adolescents between the ages of 12 to 14 years, since in this period, some of them are experimenting drugs (particularly cigarettes, alcohol and cannabis). The contents of the program we want to reduce the number of adolescents who start using drugs and / or postpone the transition from drug experimentation to regular use of drugs. Our Institute is the national center of the EU-Dap for Slovenia, during the school year 2010/2011 and we are starting with a pilot phase of implementation in 25 primary schools across Slovenia.
Learn more about the program: the EU-DAP_info.doc
AMPHORA (“Alcohol Measures for Public Health Alliance”) (2009-2012)
AMPHORA, a 4- year, €4million project co-financed by the seventh framework programme of research of the European Commission with 33 partner organizations from 14 European countries, aims to add European knowledge across a wide range of public health alcohol policy measures, and to disseminate this knowledge to those engaged in making policy. By enhancing cooperation among researchers and advancing research in Europe AMPHORA will provide new scientific evidence for the best public health measures to reduce the harm done by alcohol. The aims of the project are: (1) to create a European Alcohol Policy Research Alliance; (2) to evaluate the cost effectiveness of policy measures; (3) to analyze the alcohol policy related infrastructures; (4) to measure exposure of young people to alcohol marketing and examine how this relates to drinking behaviour two years later; (4) to analyze pricing and availability of alcohol; (5) to evaluate public health impact and policy implications of early identification and management; (6) to analyze drinking environments and alcohol-related harm; (7) to reduce the harm from surrogate and illegally produced alcohol; (8) to analyze public perceptions of alcohol related harm; (9) to develop a scale to measure the comprehensiveness and integration of public health measures to reduce the harm done by alcohol; (10) to translate science to policy through expert meetings, conference, publications, database, website etc.AMPHORA is coordinated by the Hospital Clinico i Provincial de Barcelona (HCPB) in Spain. This project is in working process.
More information: www.amphoraproject.net
European Family Empowerment (EFE): Improving family skills in order to prevent hazardous and harmful use of alcohol and other drugs
In January 2010 we started as a partner organization with the implementation of the European project “European Family Empowerment (EFE): Improving family skills in order to prevent hazardous and harmful use of alcohol and other drugs”, which involved six established institutions and organizations from six European countries (Spain, Great Britain, Sweden, Portugal, Czech Republic and Slovenia). The project financed by the European Commission under the Programme “Prevention and Drug Information.” This is a project aimed at strengthening the capacity of families to prevent drug addiction and increasing organizational capacity and synergy in cooperation with relevant institutions and NGOs. The main objective of the project is to explore and develop a variety of preventive activities of the modern European family towards the prevention of hazardous and harmful use of alcohol and other drugs by their children and adolescents. In this project we will investigate and identify the circumstances and conditions, which would be used to strengthen the skills of those families and parents to facilitate face the risk behavior of their children. We will prepare recommendations and guidelines based on evidence and analysis of family skills to parents and civil society organizations (eg teaching staff, organizations, leisure organizations, etc.), so that we may in the future to promote the strengthening of capabilities and capacities of families in the prevention of risk behavior children and to encourage networking between families as an innovative method of prevention. More about the project will be made available on the website: www.irefrea.org .
IREFREA (completed project)
There was a little knowledge of risk behaviours (relating to drug use, sexuality, aggression, driving), their interrelationship with weekend entertainment, and their determinants. It is essential to know how risk behaviours are influenced by the recreational setting (physical and cultural). Preventive actions to date are sporadic; are not based on evidence and not evaluated. The objective of the project was to progress towards a professional conception of prevention in these spheres through the creation of instruments to analyse, diagnose and evaluate risk behaviours, the recreational settings and their mutual influence. The project involved eight European countries with different geo-cultural realities. Intrapersonal, interpersonal, cultural and environmental determinants were being considered. Multidisciplinary teams reviewed, adapted and applied ethnographical and epidemiological research-action methods (social marketing and dynamic social impact theory) to ascertain, diagnose and intervene in risk behaviours and recreational settings, with particular emphasis on social networks. The work introduced youth and the recreation industry professionals, the targets of the study, in the design. Instruments and guidelines (manuals) were created for the study, analysis, diagnosis and evaluation of risk behaviours in recreational settings. A database was created, in addition to one with critical comments on existing practices. As knowledge was acquired, guidelines and other orientations were established on how to intervene in prevention taking into account the diversity of settings and cultural realities. Diffusion of results was continual during the project. Manuals, instruments, reports and data were published and posted on the web in language of each associated partner in addition to scientific publications and at professional meetings. More information: www.irefrea.org
ProSkills (continuation of the project)
The number of people with a difficult social background who don’t have any kind of formation or who hardly find a job in their first profession increases more and more. Adult education shall give a chance to these people to get further training and thus further qualification. However, the experiences from the partners’ countries show that offers of adult education and life-long learning are predominantly used by adults who already have a certain level of education. Especially socially unprivileged persons have rarely access to these offers and often have difficulties to successfully accomplish it. For this target group, the lack of social and personal competences can be a barrier. Beside technical and methodological skills, social and personal skills are basic key competences of adults and important pre-conditions for the access and the successful accomplishment of any kind of formal and informal education. Furthermore they are essential for the development and consolidation of an own social and cultural identity and they are seen as important protectors against harmful and addictive behaviour. The situation in the partners’ countries shows that these basic skills are rarely part of the curricula of adult education and that there are no offers for adults to train these skills effectively in a protective learning environment. The project aims on filling this gap. The project partners bring in the expertise from different work fields: they combine experiences with the target group of socially unprivileged persons, experiences with adult education and experiences of promoting social and personal skills in the context of health promotion and drug prevention. More information: www.pro-skills.eu .
STEPS
STEPS is an acronym of the European project, which runs in the 7th Framework Programme under the financial auspices of the European Commission with a longer name “Strengthening Engagement and Public Health Research”, strengthening the integration of public health raziskave.Projekt leading UCL (University College London), Crisis Center Skalbes Riga and office Euphet (European Public Health Association), Utrecht which invited 12 national organizations from 12 new EU member states active in the field of public health. The project aims to find answers to contemporary challenges in health, such as cardiovascular disease, cancer, mental illness, accidents and dependency. To better understand the importance of research in public health in each country and in this area develop a single strategy of research for the whole of Europe, the project partners will bring together representatives of civil society organizations, researchers and representatives of governmental institutions. The project this year is joined by Slovenia (as partners cooperate Institute of Public Health of the Republic of Slovenia and the Institute for Research and Development “pulse”) with the chosen theme of harmful alcohol consumption, which is a major public health problem in our country. More about the project is available at: http://www.steps-ph.eu .
Trainings and seminars
In addition to these projects we have and we will carry out numerous trainings and seminars on the topic of risk-taking behavior of young people, education for parenthood, eating disorders, addictions, etc.. In recent years, we co-ordinate and implement the annual work program of Local Action Groups (LAG) for the prevention of addiction in the municipality Grosuplje (including the organization of high profile seminars), which now operates successfully as a consultative body to the mayor.
Help and advice on use of European funds
In addition to all these activities, the institute also engages with the help and advice on the use of European funds. Currently, three companies help in obtaining European funding in the field of renewable energy, tourism and industry. Obtaining European funds but also help non-governmental organizations and foundations.