Drugs and Substance Abuse Within the City of Melbourne Presentation

Introduction

• The City of Melbourne is chosen as a target community.
• The drug and substance abuse problem is discussed.
• The analysis aims to assess the relevance of the actions taken.
• The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion is used as a guideline.
• Three action areas of the Charter are applied.
• The research team includes the following participants: LIST THE NAMES.

This team project involves assessing the drug and substance abuse problem in the City of Melbourne as a community that is an important administrative centre of Victoria. To analyse the effectiveness of the measures that the authorities and healthcare boards take, three action areas of the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion will be utilised as a background for the assessment. These areas concern building healthy public policy, strengthening community actions and reorienting health services.

Build Healthy Public Policy

• Expanding treatment services to help the target population (“Alcohol and other drug treatment services,” 2017).
• Addressing the issue of youth substance addiction (Borschmann et al., 2018).
• The local legislation to minimise homelessness in the community (Petty & Young, 2020).
• Taking into account the needs of different categories of the population (Ryan et al., 2018).
• Removing barriers to addressing related problems, such as mental disorders (Scott et al., 2016).
• Promoting financial assistance and problem control programmes.

Building healthy public policies to address the issue in question requires the interaction of different stakeholders. On the part of the authorities, relevant legislative initiatives come, for instance, the promotion of the law to reduce homelessness and the removal of barriers to access to healthcare services. Medical boards, in turn, promote strategies to assist vulnerable populations and participate in formal programmes aimed to develop interventions.

Strengthen Community Actions

• Promoting counselling services to strengthen community actions (“Drug and alcohol counselling,” 2020).
• Identifying social risk factors, for instance, negative family histories (Kinner et al., 2015).
• Control over drug-related hospital admissions and pill testing (“Medically supervised injecting centres,” 2020).
• Disseminating the information about the issue, for instance, severe complications (Ogloff et al., 2017).
• Providing learning opportunities and engaging the target audience (Williams et al., 2015).
• Findings ways to enhance support and establish free communication with the population.

Strengthening community actions is an area that involves implementing the necessary tasks to enhance the practice of interacting with the target audience. As a topical measure, in the City of Melbourne, counselling services and drug-related control are promoted. In addition, the information about the threats of the drug and substance abuse problem is disseminated among the population, and residents receive learning opportunities. Open communication is one of the most effective tools of interaction among all the stakeholders.

Reorient Health Services

• Monitoring the quality of medications to avoid drug-related hospital admissions (Cunningham, 2019).
• Reorganising health services to meet the needs of the target population (“Drugs and substance abuse,” 2020).
• Patient-centred care to establish partnerships with citizens (Finnell et al., 2019).
• Healthcare employees’ work to change drug user stigma (Latkin et al., 2017).
• Recruiting professional nurses to provide comprehensive and high-quality care (Victoria State Government, 2018).
• Stimulating healthcare employees’ education and enhancing individual qualifications.

To address the drug and substance abuse problem, in the City of Melbourne, the reorientation of health services is underway. In particular, the involvement of specialists to cooperate with the target population is carried out, and the work is carried out to recruit professional nurses with appropriate education. Drug quality control practices are implemented, and partnerships with patients and their families are established to provide continuous and comprehensive care.

Conclusion

• The drug and substance abuse issue in the City of Melbourne is discussed.
• The measures taken by the stakeholders are crucial to meet the needs of the population.
• Addressing the problem is conducted through both legislative and social initiatives.
• The Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion helps identify relevant action areas.
• Promoting healthy policies aims to reduce the level of substance abuse, particularly among the youth.
• Reorienting health services is one of the ways to achieve the set goals and help patients.

The described drug and substance abuse problem in the City of Melbourne is discussed from the perspective of specific action areas included in the Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion. The assistance algorithm involves engaging various resources and practices locally to address the issues of the target audience with an emphasis on the youth as a vulnerable category. The current legal and social practices aim to help patients and their families and create a positive environment for productive communication.

References

Alcohol and other drug treatment services. (2017). State of Victoria. Web.

Borschmann, R., Stark, P., Prakash, C., & Sawyer, S. M. (2018). Risk profile of young people admitted to hospital for suicidal behaviour in Melbourne, Australia. Journal of Paediatrics and Child Health, 54(11), 1213-1220. Web.

Cunningham, M. (2019). Melbourne City Council weighs up pill-testing trial as government stands firm on policy. The Age. Web.

Drug and alcohol counselling. (2020). Cohealth. Web.

Drugs and substance abuse. (2020). City of Melbourne. Web.

Finnell, D. S., Tierney, M., & Mitchell, A. M. (2019). Nursing: Addressing substance use in the 21st century. Substance Abuse, 40(4), 412-420. Web.

Kinner, S. A., Degenhardt, L., Coffey, C., Hearps, S., Spittal, M., Sawyer, S. M., & Patton, G. C. (2015). Substance use and risk of death in young offenders: A prospective data linkage study. Drug and Alcohol Review, 34(1), 46-50. Web.

Latkin, C. A., Edwards, C., Davey-Rothwell, M. A., & Tobin, K. E. (2017). The relationship between social desirability bias and self-reports of health, substance use, and social network factors among urban substance users in Baltimore, Maryland. Addictive Behaviors, 73, 133-136. Web.

Medically supervised injecting centres save lives. (2020). Alcohol and Drug Foundation. Web.

Ogloff, J. R., Pfeifer, J. E., Shepherd, S. M., & Ciorciari, J. (2017). Assessing the mental health, substance abuse, cognitive functioning, and social/emotional well-being needs of aboriginal prisoners in Australia. Journal of Correctional Health Care, 23(4), 398-411. Web.

Petty, J., & Young, A. (2020). Visible homelessness in a “liveable city”: Municipal responses to homelessness in Melbourne. American Journal of Economics and Sociology, 79(2), 401-426. Web.

Ryan, K. E., Wilkinson, A. L., Pedrana, A., Quinn, B., Dietze, P., Hellard, M., & Stoové, M. (2018). Implications of survey labels and categorisations for understanding drug use in the context of sex among gay and bisexual men in Melbourne, Australia. International Journal of Drug Policy, 55, 183-186. Web.

Scott, N., Carrotte, E. R., Higgs, P., Cogger, S., Stoové, M. A., Aitken, C. K., & Dietze, P. M. (2016). Longitudinal changes in psychological distress in a cohort of people who inject drugs in Melbourne, Australia. Drug and Alcohol Dependence, 168, 140-146. Web.

Victoria State Government. (2018). Victoria’s homelessness and rough sleeping action plan. Web.

Williams, J. W., Canterford, L., Toumbourou, J. W., Patton, G. C., & Catalano, R. F. (2015). Social development measures associated with problem behaviours and weight status in Australian adolescents. Prevention Science, 16(6), 822-831. Web.