ASAUPAM - Associació d'Intervenció Comunitària en Drogues

Community-based harm reduction

ASAUPAM is a community drug-intervention association that has worked on substance use since 1999. Its approach emphasizes harm reduction and meeting people where they are: the association works in places where drug use or dealing occurs and with the surrounding community.

Services and programs

• Program and service development: operates a mobile resource for safer injection and develops programs for people who actively use drugs.
• Outreach and education: identifies and works in areas where drug use or illegal sales are present, helps prevent social and health problems, responds to crises, and mediates with the community.
• Training with participants: offers participatory learning spaces for people with substance-use disorders who use drugs, focused on reducing physical, psychological, and social harms.
• Safer-use supplies and disposal: distributes supplies for safer use, provides on-site information about treatment programs, and manages syringe-exchange programs in community settings.
• Harm-reduction materials: develops and shares accessible visual materials grounded in peer education.
• Professional training and consultation: advises and trains health and social-service professionals working with people who actively use drugs and people experiencing social exclusion.
• Community plans: designs, manages, and evaluates community drug-related plans through coordinated, networked work.
• Community mediation: works with community organizations and businesses affected by behavior related to substance-use disorders to find solutions that work for all sides.
• Inclusion and community participation: encourages people with substance-use disorders to connect with the broader community through activities and shared spaces, including pre-employment projects that benefit the surrounding area.
• Individual employment pathways: creates personal plans for entry into the mainstream workforce, employment programs, or vocational training in coordination with public companies and specialized nonprofits.
• Pre-employment programs: offers work-readiness activities for people actively using drugs who cannot access standard employment channels, in coordination with municipal public-space maintenance services.

Prevention

ASAUPAM views prevention as addressing factors that contribute to drug use among young people. Its prevention work includes:

• Educational workshops for young people in secondary and postsecondary education and nonformal learning settings, adapted to age and risk.
• Open-area outreach to identify and prevent risk among young people who encounter drugs in informal gathering places, with distribution of informational and safer-sex supplies.
• Educational programs as alternatives to administrative penalties for minors cited by law enforcement for possessing or using drugs in public.
• Development and distribution of prevention and educational materials.
• Consultation and training for professionals in prevention services.

Contact

Phone: +34 93 392 74 11. Email: ong@asaupam.cat. Office hours: 10 a.m.–6 p.m. Twitter: @asaupam.