Advancing the implementation of evidence-based substance use prevention in Latin America: the Evidencia Viva program registry.

Evidence-based program registries (EBPRs) are essential tools in prevention science, providing structured evaluations of intervention effectiveness to guide policymakers and practitioners. While established registries such as Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development and Xchange have been instrumental in cataloging evidence-based programs, Latin America has lacked a region-specific repository tailored to its unique prevention challenges. Evidencia Viva was developed to address this gap by systematically assessing and classifying substance use prevention programs implemented and evaluated in Latin America.

Bridging Gaps: The European Prevention Curriculum Translation, Adaptation and Implementation Process in Brazil.

This paper outlines the adaptation and implementation of the European Prevention Curriculum (EUPC) in Brazil, launched in 2022 to enhance the skills of professionals in substance use prevention. The EUPC-Brazil project follows a decentralized model with significant collaboration from regional and local stakeholders, as well as international partners, such as the European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA). The curriculum was adapted through feedback from local professionals and policymakers, ensuring its relevance to national needs while maintaining European best practices.

European Prevention Curriculum (EUPC)-Two Years of Pilot Implementation in Austria.

The European Prevention Curriculum (EUPC) is a European initiative to promote professional and quality-assured substance use prevention. In Austria, the EUPC is trialled via a three-year pilot project to explore its appropriateness and long-term feasibility. We report on the first two years of EUPC project implementation as part of a Special Issue on EUPC implementation practice and lessons learnt.

Disentangling the temporal relationship between alcohol-related attitudes and heavy episodic drinking in adolescents within a randomized controlled trial.

Background And Aims: Within many alcohol prevention interventions, changes in alcohol-related attitudes (ARA) are often proposed as precursors to changes in drinking behaviour. This study aimed to measure the longitudinal relationship between ARA and behaviour during the implementation of a large-scale prevention trial.

Design And Setting: This study was a two-arm school-based clustered randomized controlled trial.

What public health challenges and unmet medical needs would benefit from interdisciplinary collaboration in the EU? A survey and multi-stakeholder debate.

In the past decade, significant European calls for research proposals have supported translational collaborative research on non-communicable and infectious diseases within the biomedical life sciences by bringing together interdisciplinary and multinational consortia. This research has advanced our understanding of disease pathophysiology, marking considerable scientific progress. Yet, it is crucial to retrospectively evaluate these efforts' societal impact.

Framing substance use as "recreational" is neither accurate nor helpful for prevention purposes.

This debate paper discusses six reasons why the term "recreational substance use" should be avoided. (1) Social norms and beliefs are drivers of behavior; therefore, the normalized use of the term conveys injunctive norms of a fully socially acceptable substance. Injunctive norms are the most important drivers of initiation into substance use.

[SBIRT model as a prevention strategy against addiction with and without substance in teenagers.].

A high prevalence of adolescent substance use, risky consumption patterns and the decrease in the age of initiation, together with the growth of non-substance addictions, represent a huge challenge for Public Health. This suggests the need for a change of focus in the work of the primary care settings, which must be more proactive in the early detection and intervention. Although there are some previous experiences in Spain, we do not have a duly standardised system, based on clinical practice and validated in consulting rooms, which could be used in a general, simple, and guaranteed manner.

"Tell Me How Much Your Friends Consume"-Personal, Behavioral, Social, and Attitudinal Factors Associated with Alcohol and Cannabis Use among European School Students.

Background: Substance use in European adolescents remains a serious health concern. Assessing what affects adolescents' substance use is crucial for implementing effective prevention. This study aims to examine alcohol and cannabis use-related behavioral, social, and attitudinal variables that might directly be considered to guide prevention responses for adolescents.

Cannabis use among adolescents: Risk pattern, implications and possible explanatory variables.

In contrast to the achievements with other substances, it has not yet been possible to reduce the levels of cannabis use, the most used illegal substance among Spanish adolescents. The objective of this paper consists of updating levels of use (incorporating ages 12 and 13), estimating high-risk use and analyzing possible associated variables. For this purpose, a correlational method was used consisting of the administration of a survey to compulsory secondary school and high school students from the autonomous community of Galicia (Spain) in 2016.

The theoretical model of the school-based prevention programme Unplugged.

Unplugged is a school-based prevention programme designed and tested in the EU-Dap trial. The programme consists of 12 units delivered by class teachers to adolescents 12-14 years old. It is a strongly interactive programme including a training of personal and social skills with a specific focus on normative beliefs.

"Unplugged," a European school-based program for substance use prevention among adolescents: overview of results from the EU-Dap trial.

The EU-Dap study aimed to develop and evaluate a school-based curriculum for the prevention of substance use among young people. The school curriculum, "Unplugged," is based on social influence approach and addresses social and personal skills, knowledge, and normative beliefs. It consists of 12 one-hour interactive sessions delivered by teachers.

Environmental drug prevention in the EU. Why is it so unpopular?

Adolescents go through changes in their neurobehavioural and psychosocial functioning that can result in their desire to conform to peer norms taking predominance over cognitive impulse control mechanisms. This can help explain why, when peers are present, adolescent behaviour may not be significantly modified by what they know about risks and consequences. This finding has implications for prevention as it points to the importance of responses that actively target the environment in which substance use takes place, and where social norms are formed and supported.

Methods for synthesizing findings on moderation effects across multiple randomized trials.

This paper presents new methods for synthesizing results from subgroup and moderation analyses across different randomized trials. We demonstrate that such a synthesis generally results in additional power to detect significant moderation findings above what one would find in a single trial. Three general methods for conducting synthesis analyses are discussed, with two methods, integrative data analysis and parallel analyses, sharing a large advantage over traditional methods available in meta-analysis.

The effectiveness of a school-based substance abuse prevention program: 18-month follow-up of the EU-Dap cluster randomized controlled trial.

Aim: To evaluate the effectiveness of a school-based substance abuse prevention program developed in the EU-Dap study (EUropean Drug Addiction Prevention trial).

Materials And Methods: Cluster Randomized Controlled Trial. Seven European countries participated in the study; 170 schools (7079 pupils 12-14 years of age) were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions or to a control condition during the school year 2004/2005.

The effectiveness of a school-based substance abuse prevention program: EU-Dap cluster randomised controlled trial.

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of the school-based drug abuse prevention program developed in the EU-Dap study (EUropean Drug Abuse Prevention trial) in preventing the use of tobacco, alcohol and drugs at the post-test.

Methods: Cluster Randomised Controlled Trial. Seven European countries participated in the study; 170 schools (7079 pupils 12-14 years of age) were randomly assigned to one of three experimental conditions or to a control condition during the school year 2004/2005.