Workbook 3.3: Best practice

The new national action plan on addiction for the 2018-2022 period reaffirms the government's willingness to reinforce quality in public responses on the basis of observation, research, evaluation and a reinforced training strategy, with a special impetus on prevention. Under the prevention, care and research strategical pillars, it defines quality assurance objectives with regards to the promotion and the implementation of evidence-based knowledge, evaluation and skill raising through training and scientific mediation. The Interministerial Commission for the Prevention of Addictive Behaviours (CIPCA) reflects the political will of developing evidence-based prevention knowledge.
In France, quality assurance in Drug Demand Reduction (prevention, risk reduction, treatment and rehabilitation) builds on specific advocacy, guidelines or trainings from public health institutions or professional societies. It is in the remits of the French Public Health Agency (Santé publique France - SpF) and the French National Authority for Health (Haute autorité de santé - HAS). SpF disseminates evidence in drug prevention research and supports the local experimental transfer of international evidenced-base programmes like Unplugged, GBG, SFP, etc. The HAS diffuses professional guidelines/recommendations on risk reduction and treatment addressing: (i) Opioid Substitution Treatment, (ii) Early intervention and risk/harm reduction for crack or free base users, (iii) Clinics for young drug users, (iv) Treatment of cocaine users, (v) Harm and risk reduction in low threshold services (CAARUD) and (vi) Prevention and risk reduction delivered by drug treatment centres (CSAPA) (released in Autumn 2018). The two later documents (v and vi) serve as a baseline for compulsory evaluations of drug services but the fulfilment of the other guidelines is not a formal prerequisite for support or subsidies. Tools exist to help decision makers to select quality prevention programmes (EDPQS materials and the ASPIRE toolkit adapted from them) but the extent to which they are used is unknown. [Extract of the summary]