The Impact of Public Policies on Prevention in Colombia

Introduction

In 1920 started in Colombia the legislation related to drug abuse. With the emergence of cocaine production in large scale in the beginning of the 80s, the “Law on narcotics” was emitted in 1986; in this law, still in force, prevention was proposed for the first time as a must.

In 2011 the Ministry of Health funded the piloting and adaptation of some tested and effective prevention programs, such as Communities That Care (CTC) and Strengthening Families (SF). In 2012 drug abuse was defined as a public health problem, and the government called a National Commission on Drug Policies, which declared that all decision regarding treatment and prevention had, from that moment on, to be evidence-based and supported by research.

This poster presents preliminary results of the implementation of the Colombian version of CTC, called Comunidades Que se Cuidan (CQC) in eight communities.

Method

Data were collected with a locally validated version of the CTC Youth Survey in two waves, separated by a two-year span. 33.000 surveys were answered by students grades 6^th t 11^th  in the first wave,  and 17.000 in the second; data were processed with SPSS 18.

Some results

CQC has contributed significantly to the empowerment of the communities where it was implemented, and a reduction in the use of alcohol and other drugs was observed in the second wave of data collection, especially among the youngest students. As the design was quasi-experimental (no control group) these results cannot be attributed so far to the intervention, but they are very promising. Ten new communities will adopt CQC in 2015, and in four of them an experimental design will be set in place.

Currently, the Ministry of Health is considering other prevention strategies for different domains, particularly the school and the family. Even more important, for the first time the government is allocating significant funds to support local initiatives aimed at preventing drugs and alcohol abuse among minors.

 Conclusions

The adoption of a public health perspective in Colombia to tackle with drug abuse, instead of the traditional criminal approach, stimulated the adoption of prevention systems and programs with good scientific support that never before were considered in the country. The acceptance among practitioners of the importance of evaluating all the activities related to prevention is a first step in the long pathway of prevention science.