The Frontine Politeia project: the need for involving prevention implementers within substance use and crime prevention

The Frontline Politeia project is a practice application of established EU and international standards, evidence-based interventions (EBI) and policies for substance use prevention. Key condition for EBI uptake is to have a trained prevention workforce for proper application. Frontline politeia designs and tests training using the European Prevention Curriculum (EUPC; for more information see https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/best-practice/european-prevention-curriculu...) for frontline staff like teachers, police officers, streetworkers, social workers etc. It follows-up on previous EU-financed work (EDPQS, UPC-Adapt, ASAP) that focused on training DOPs (decision-, opinion- and policymakers). Frontline politeia is their logical complement: the frontline staff coordinated by DOPs need to be trained as well: in prioritising EBIs and phasing out obsolete practices. This project applies high-level training expertise in translating scientific facts into practice by hands-on tools and practicing in a blended learning delivery: e-learning intertwined with practical application in communities.

The project team included 15 European partners; the academic and civil society organisations involved cover 14 member states from all EU regions in 14 languages, adding countries with recent interest in the EUPC, like France, Sweden and Finland. The game-changing feature is the active and dedicated inclusion of law enforcement staff as important actors for integrated and improved prevention responses, with the European Crime Prevention Network (EUCPN - https://eucpn.org/) as expert contributor.

Focus of the project was to design and test e-learning tools with interactive methods, and real-life application by local teams including police. Trained competencies are applied in local analysis of interventions or needs with EMCDDA (see https://www.emcdda.europa.eu/) and CTC (Communities That Care) tools. 

The project ended in December 2023 and was able to develop and pilot an on site 2 days training and a distant-learning training, creating six interactive e-learning modules (Introduction, Environmental prevention, School-based prevention, Family-based prevention, Leisure and Community-based prevention). Next to this, the project consortium developed several tools to map and assess prevention interventions. Based on those tools, 77 local prevention interventions (in six European regions) were mapped and screened on their quality. 

In this short communication we will talk about the project objectives, the outcomes and deliverables of the project and overall the future that lays in involving implementers (next to DOPs) in local communities with the goal to enhance and empower a communities' prevention capacity. The final goal is the implementation of evidence based prevention interventions all across Europe and the de-implementation of ineffective interventions or those interventions that even do harm.