Future of opioid markets in Europe: Foresight approaches

What you can expect from this workshop
During this interactive session, you will be introduced to foresight approaches in practice. Specifically, you will learn how to start applying scenario building effectively in policy support. Through a case study exercise on the opium production ban in Afghanistan, your input will also contribute to a reflection on how national foresight studies can be of use to each other, and how they can feed other settings (i.e. local level, European level, etc).
Good to know
Related sessions:

We encourage you to attend the main session ‘The ripple effect: International developments in the opioid market and their potential implications for European public health and security’ (see here), taking place in Auditorium 1 prior to the workshop. It will be an ideal warm-up with an extensive introduction on the implications of the opium production ban and the current state-of-play.
The EUDA is organising a session on ‘Scenarios for the future addiction fields by 2040’ (see here), which will provide insights on foresight and scenarios.

Preparation
The workshop will start with a short recap of potential scenarios of the opium ban developed in a recent Belgian study and their key drivers and uncertainties. To get the most out of the workshop, we encourage you to read the preparatory document with the scenario descriptions ahead of time. Preparatory document (PDF) >>
Workshop details
The workshop will focus both on how to deal with the impacts of the opium ban in Afghanistan in a complex and evolving opioid market, but also on foresight methodology itself. It will demonstrate the value of national foresight perspectives for EU strategy. By building on a scenario building exercise carried out in Belgium, participants will be able to provide input from their national perspectives and test the robustness of existing EU strategies to different scenarios. Through group work approach applying the wind-tunnelling technique, the aim is to determine if existing strategies are future-proof (i.e. robust across several different futures).
This workshop is organised within the framework of the European DRUG-PREP project.