Nursing Pilot Project in Latin America

Phase I – Technical Report

1.    General information on CICAD

    The Member States of the Organization of American States (OAS) addressed the problem of the illicit traffic of drugs and the improper use thereof when they established, in 1986, the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission (CICAD).  At present, CICAD has 34 Member States.  Its purpose is to promote and facilitate close collaboration among the countries for controlling the illicit traffic in, production and consumption of drugs, pursuant to the 1986 Inter-American Program of Action of Río de Janeiro and the Anti-Drug Strategy in the Hemisphere, a document approved in 1996 as a platform for greater efforts to control drugs in the twenty-first century.

2.   The CICAD Program

CICAD’s goals involve the following:

• Promoting the participation of citizens in the prevention and treatment of drug abuse through active community action.

• Training nurses, as well as health and education professionals, to promote health, prevent the use of drugs, and treat and reintegrate drug-dependent persons into society.

• Using scientific criteria for evaluating the results of programs to promote health and to prevent and treat drug abuse.

• Promoting research on trends in drug use, and the factors associated with the consumption of such substances, using standardized questionnaires and methodologies so as to ensure comparability of data in time and among countries.

• Collaborating with the Member States in collecting and analyzing statistics related to drug control

• Strengthening the controls on psychoactive pharmacological products and substances, supporting the agencies responsible for this process, with a view to reducing the abuse of legal substances.

• Strengthening and promoting the implementation of controls on precursors and essential chemicals and on money laundering, in accordance with the United Nations Convention Against the Illicit Traffic in Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (1988) and CICAD’s model regulations.

• Fostering the adoption of effective legal systems and mechanisms for promoting effective harmonization of legislation and research and evidence-compilation procedures .

• Promoting alternative development programs to ensure suitable environmental protection, economic opportunities and verified eradication, in order to ensure long-term reduction of illegal crops.

• Updating and strengthening national drug commissions with the introduction of advanced technology, effective organizational systems, communications, the application of resources, and development and evaluation programs.

• Increasing support for maritime and customs cooperation to combat the illicit traffic in drugs.

• Updating lists of controlled chemical substances.

    CICAD has an intensive program of cooperative action with the countries of Latin America and the Caribbean in the following priority areas:

• Demand reduction of drugs

• Supply reduction of drugs

• Institution building

• Legal development

• Inter-American Observatory on Drugs

• Alternative development

• Control of money laundering

3.  General information on the CICAD project to train nurses in health promotion to prevent the

      improper use of drugs in Latin America

    With the support of the Government of Japan, in 1997 CICAD began developing the project to provide nurses with drug-related training in three Latin American universities:  the National University of Cordoba (Cordoba, Argentina); the National University of Colombia (Santafe de Bogotá, Colombia); and the University of Carabobo (Valencia, Venezuela).  In 1999, CICAD expanded the project to include three additional universities:  Universidad Mayor de San Andres (La Paz, Bolivia); University of Guayaquil (Ecuador); and Universidad Peruana Cayetano Heredia (Lima, Peru).

    The project has two phases.  The first works to include the topic of drugs in undergraduate nursing curricula; the second focuses on the post-graduate level, providing training to nurses in research skills and including the topic of drugs in post-graduate curricula (specialization, master’s degree, doctorate).  The project will develop through the following stages:

• Stage I            Socialization of the project in the schools of nursing

• Stage II          Providing drug-related training to nurses

• Stage III        Developing the drug-related curriculum for the schools of nursing

• Stage IV         Implementing the drug-related curriculum in the schools of nursing

• Stage V           Drug-related extension and research activities

• Stage VI         Project evaluation and monitoring

    The universities in Argentina, Colombia and Venezuela have completed the first phase of the project; the universities in Bolivia, Peru and Ecuador will complete the first phase in December 2001. The first groups of nurses who have received training under the new curriculum will graduate in the year 2005.

    The project also supports the development of small-scale studies on drugs and related problems, as well as community extension activities.

    In 2001, the CICAD nursing project will be introduced in two universities in Brazil, at the Federal University of Santa Catarina, Florianopolis.  In addition it will be introduced at the University of Concepción in Chile and at the University of Nueva León, in Monterrey, Mexico.

    Phase two of the CICAD nursing project will involve the same nursing schools or departments that participated in the first phase.  The focus of phase II is to introduce the topic of drugs and related problems in post-graduate programs (specialization, master’s degree, or doctorate), depending on the situation of each school or department. The CICAD nursing program also provides opportunities for professors and post-graduate students to receive training in research methods (qualitative and quantitative) to support post-graduate/undergraduate nursing courses and drug-related research.  The universities in Brazil, Chile and Mexico will be implementing phases I and II concurrently.

The Governments of the United States and Canada have contributed financially to the project.

4.   Contacts at CICAD:

Dr. Anna McG. Chisman

Director,

Programming and Demand Reduction

CICAD/OAS

Telephone:  (202) 458-6221

Fax:  (202) 458-3658

e-mail:  Achisman@oas.org

Dr. Maria da Gloria Miotto Wright

International Coordinator

Nursing Project

CICAD/OAS

Telephone: (202) 458-3788

Fax: (202) 458-3658

e-mail: Gwright@oas.org