Supporting Youth Participation In Drug Use Prevention Efforts Within Schools And Communities – A Novel Youth Peer-To-Peer Programme In The UNODC Pipeline

Authors

1.Ms. Su Hong (⚑ Austria) 1

2.Mr. Peer van der Kreeft (⚑ Belgium) 2

3.Mr. Johan Jongbloet (⚑ Belgium) 3

4.Dr. Wadih Maalouf (⚑ Austria) 1

1. United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, 2. Ghent University College, 3. Ghent University of Applied Sciences and Arts (HOGENT)

Abstract

The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) seeks to promote a culture of prevention in line with prevention science, in particular with the UNODC/WHO International Standards on Drug Use Prevention. UNODC provides technical support to Member States through family skills programmes aimed to improve family functioning, communication, and support children’s development of personal and social skills. UNODC also promotes youth engagement and implicates youth in the policy-making response on prevention through the Youth Initiative and its annual Youth Forum.

Building on the transformative power of youth and their potential as game changers, UNODC provides technical guidance to youths who remain interested in pursuing prevention efforts following their Youth Forum participation. To support young leaders further strategically and systematically, UNODC is developing a peer-to-peer youth prevention programme (tentatively, ‘Friends-in-Focus’) to benefit the growing youth population in the world and help their peers better protect their health and well-being. It is worthy to note that there is a lack in evidence-based peer-led drug use prevention interventions which have been documented to have been effective on a large scale.

The development of this new programme will incorporate review from global experts in prevention science and/or experienced in working with youth, as well as feedback from youths themselves. Once available, the prototype will be piloted in various regions through a process of cultural adaptation and will be evaluated for its process of implementation and fidelity, with the aim of developing an improved version to test for evidence of effectiveness and further scale-up. It will strive to achieve a multiplier effect through cascade trainings by trained youth peer leaders within their schools and communities, and also strive to fill the gap in the availability of evidence-based drug prevention programmes within the public domain, which target older adolescents and operate through a peer mechanism.