Experiences of building a Prompt Response Network for emerging drugs of concern in Australia

Background

Prompt recognition and response to new psychoactive substances and emerging drug trends of concern necessarily involves a diverse range of community, health and justice stakeholders. In Australia, this is further complicated by a federated system of states and territories. The National Centre for Clinical Research on Emerging Drugs undertook a process to develop a system that enabled information sharing and prompt response at a national level.

Methods

Establishment of the system was embedded in extensive consultation and co-design with stakeholders across all nine Australian states and territories. The co-design team initially undertook processing mapping to identify common steps across all jurisdictions in monitoring and assessing signals of potential drug-related harm. This was followed by co-design of assets identified through the consultation process as being necessary to support information sharing across the network.  

Results 

The consultation and co-design process brought together a diverse group of stakeholders from across Australia that included drug user advocacy organisations, harm reduction service providers, alcohol and other drug treatment providers, forensic scientists, police, toxicologists, researchers, health departments, and emergency department clinicians.  The stakeholder group was formalised into a Prompt Response Network, supported by a facilitated quarterly meeting, and The Know Community, a professional online platform, which was launched in December 2022. The platform currently connects over 200 people across Australia, with representation from all Australian states and territories and a mix of disciplinary groups.  To support national dissemination of drug alerts, a separate public website “theknow.org.au” was established to enable easy access for consumers to current and historical drugs alerts across Australia.  Since December 2022, there have been thirteen public drug alerts issued by Australian government departments.  The majority (n=7) have been related to the potent novel synthetic opioid nitazene family (including metonitazene, protonitazene and isotonitazene), four related to MDMA and two have been related to cathinones. 

Conclusions

Undertaking the design of the Prompt Response Network required a facilitated network approach inclusive of people who use drugs, and implementation of the network assets supports information sharing to recognising and responding to emerging drugs of concern.