“Integrated interventions are dead. Long live sustainable integrated interventions!”—Austerity Challenges the Continuation of Effective Interventions in the Field of Drug Use-Related Harm Reduction

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Notes

¹ The reader is reminded that the concepts of ‘risk factors,’ ‘vulnerabilities’ as well as ‘protective factors,’ are often noted in the literature, without adequately noting their dimensions (linear, nonlinear; rates of development and decay; anchoring or integration, cessation, etc.), their ‘demands,’ the critical necessary conditions (endogenously as well as exogenously; from a micro to a meso to a macro level) which are necessary for either of them to operate (begin, continue, become anchored, and integrate, change as de facto realities change, cease, etc.) or not to and whether their underpinnings are theory-driven, empirically based, individual and/or systemic stakeholder-bound, based upon ‘principles of faith,’ doctrinaire positions, ‘personal truths,’ historical observation, precedents and traditions that accumulate over time, conventional wisdom, perceptual and judgmental constraints, ‘transient public opinion,’ etc. This is necessary to consider and to clarify if these terms are not to remain as yet additional shibboleth in a field of many stereotypes, tradition-driven activities and stakeholder objectives. Editor's note.

² E.g., Athens University Medical School (Department of Hygiene, Epidemiology, and Medical Statistics), Hellenic Center for Disease Control and Prevention (HCDCP), the Organisation Against Drugs (OKANA), and the Greek Reitox focal point of the EMCDDA (only to mention some agencies/institutions).

³ Interventions may include inter alia the provision of: injection equipment, vaccination, drug dependence treatment, testing, infectious disease treatment, health promotion, and targeted delivery of services (European Centre for Disease Control and Prevention & European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, 2011).

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Notes on contributors

Georgios K. Nikolopoulos

Georgios K. Nikolopoulos, PhD, (Greece) has received a post-doctoral research fellowship from the International AIDS Society and the National Institute on Drug Abuse and is now leading the Transmission Reduction Intervention Project (Principal Investigator: Dr. Samuel Friedman) in Athens, Greece. He earned a PhD in the epidemiology of infectious diseases at the School of Medicine of the Athens University in Greece and has served at the Greek public health agency, focusing on HIV surveillance. Dr. Nikolopoulos also has expertise in the conduct of systematic reviews and meta-analyses with useful contributions to the evolving domain of genetic epidemiology.

Anastasios Fotiou

Anastasios Fotiou, PhD, (Greece) is the head of the Epidemiology Unit of the Greek Reitox focal point of the EMCDDA at the University Mental Health Research Institute (UMHRI), Athens, Greece. He is also a researcher in the Drug Epidemiology Research and Prevention section at UMHRI. He has worked on epidemiological studies of substance use and related harm in the general and special populations in Greece. His research interests are in tobacco, alcohol, and other substance use, high-risk drug use and related harm, psychosocial factors, prevention, and responses. Anastasios Fotiou has received B.A. degree in sociology from the University of Crete (Greece), an M.A. degree in sociology from the Essex University (U.K.) and a Ph.D. degree in psychiatry from the medical school of the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens. He has also received the State Scholarships Foundation award in 1992.