Transcript Research priorities

Raising the bar
Meeting Europe’s future
challenges
Michael Farrell
Chair
EMCDDA Scientific Advisory Committee
Priorities
• Improve access to scientific knowledge
• Improving links across the breadth of the scientific field
from basic to applied science
• Reinforce links between the EMCDDA and the scientific
community
• Promoting the science of addictions within the broader
scientific field
• Promoting empirical approaches to broad policy analysis
within and across member states
• Understanding the ethical and policy implications of new
technologies and new drugs in contemporary society
Access to scientific knowledge 1
• Important that drug policy can be evidencebased
– What evidence is needed?
– How to translate evidence into practice?
– What are possible ways to bridge the gap between
research and practice?
– Understanding the limits of evidence and the need for
varied sources of information and knowledge
Access to scientific knowledge 2
• Cochrane Collaboration
– International not-for-profit and independent
organization
– Up-to-date, accurate information about healthcare
– Cochrane reviews are recognised as the gold
standard in evidence-based health care
• Future challenges:
– Maintain high quality standard of updated evidence
– Interact with all stakeholders to prioritize questions
– The limitations of such methodologies for some of the
complex social and individual problems of addiction
The EMCDDA.
• After 15 years robust evidence about some of the
significant and sustained differences between countries
require further exploration
• Challenge is now to begin to understand these
differences
• Comparative analysis
• Creative use of differences in policy implementation,
especially regional differences within countries for
comparative differences in policy implementation
• The output of the EMCDDA could become more
scientifically robust and impactful
The EMCDDA and the
scientific community
• Improving monitoring implies
• supporting and developing the focal points and
increasing the broader national research
infrastructure and research capacity
– Keeping and developing the information network
– Working more closely with the broad research
community
– Providing information in a manner which matches the
needs of practitioners and policy makers
Methodological developments .
• More comparable good quality data
collection in European member states is
necessary
• Understanding new trends requires the
combined use of quantitative standardized
data and more qualitative information.
• Use of modelling in policy analysis
Research into practice in Europe
• Too much reliance on intervention studies
conducted in the United States
• European implementation substantially more
textured and need for better monitoring and
evaluation of such differences
• Large scale collaborative approach to key
questions
• Understanding development and resilience in
individuals, families and communities
• Interventions in novel settings and with new
technologies
Sustainability
• Need for National and International organisations to work
closely together to promote future high quality
collaborative research
• The EMCDDA is potentially in a strong position to
promote and support the collaboration between
European drug researchers
• The EMCDDA should continue to follow and disseminate
research developments and findings in Europe