Experiences and Lessons Learnt from the UNODC Effort to Monitor the Coverage and Quality of National Prevention Systems

Despite the accumulation of the evidence and of the understanding of what constitutes effective substance use prevention, there are substantive gaps in transferring this understanding in to practice globally. One of the fundamental barriers for bridging the science with the practice remains to be the scarcity in data about the current status of prevention programming in the different geographical regions. In the context of the UNODC efforts to promote evidence-based prevention globally, the lack of detailed understanding of the quality and coverage of prevention in its Member States, is an important impediment for targeting the efforts optimally. UNODC collects annually from its 194 Member States data on the drug use situation and on the prevention response in their countries but this data only provides very limited info as to the coverage and quality. For example, Member States can report only on a limited number of prevention interventions that are not systematically in line with the evidence or UNODC guiding tools, and with regard to the quality, the only information provided by the current tools is about the existence of evaluation. 

To answer to these needs UNODC is developing a monitoring tool, aiming to assess the quality and coverage of national prevention response, based on the UNODC International Prevention Standards. This tools aims to support national level decision makers in planning improvements to their prevention systems. It is also used in the context of the UNODC Paris Pact Initiative to gather more broad understanding of the status of evidence based prevention across countries. The data gathered on the quality and coverage of prevention internationally, as well as the usability of such tool in the context of aiming to increase understanding of the status of prevention, and supporting quality and coverage of prevention programming at the national level, will be discussed, and the potential for analysing the features of effective prevention systems in general reflected upon.

As the new sustainable developmental goals have identified prevention of substance use as a priority (in the goal 3.5) the relevance of such tool might be even more widely recognised. Furthermore, as the majority of the current prevention research focuses on the effectiveness of specific programs, and less is yet known about the features of effective prevention systems, especially at national level, such data might provide possibilities to expand understanding at this front.