 Welcome everybody. Today we are talking about prevention. The chairman of this session will be Gregor Burkart. We will also introduce our participants today. Thank you Gregor for taking the floor. Thank you. So this is the introduction to our webinar today. It is based on and done with people we know from our European Prevention Curriculum Training. So all of them are master trainers here. And it's about the role that such a training can have in advocacy. We all have seen the problems of raising now from in COVID times. How little it matters that we have the science and the facts if we do not have a proper narrative for it and can communicate this. So I hope that now we have some opening remarks by our director if he has entered already. Otherwise, if he is not Marika, I will. I cannot see him yet. Probably he's taken by some other commitments. So I think we can advance and then check up later. Okay. Okay, so we will first have a twin presentation by our two European UPC master trainers. Maximilian von Hayden in Berlin is a public health researcher and prevention practitioner with a background in social work and research experience in the field of medical psychology and sexology. He's the editor of a handbook psychoactive substances published by Springer co funder and board member of finder the mind foundation and research fellow at the Institute of Sexology and sexual medicine at the famous charity, the opening of Berlin and Trin from Estonia focuses her work on mental health and risk behavior prevention. She has long experience with facilitating public health present conversations with teachers parents employers and decision makers on complex topics beyond drugs such as HIV sex education and alcohol. And she has a background in education allocation is working in a national institute for health development in Estonia, which we cooperate a lot. Generally, and this involves with health Estonia foundation. I think now, I think max begin you have your 15 minutes. And I have introduced you both afterwards. We will have some questions to the other three stakeholders here. Which we, which you should engage also in question and answers and debate questions. Max. Thank you very much for the kind introduction Gregor. Thank you also very much for the opportunity and invitation to speak about this important topic, namely advocacy for science based prevention. We said this evidence doesn't speak for itself and thank you also for giving reference to the covert 19 pandemic, which is a great example for the importance of advocacy. I would like to begin my talk about advocacy by putting it in the larger framework of public health. And I have quoted from the Oxford textbook of public health, very simple, but also very useful definition of public health, which says public health is politics. And also in that its policies and practices affect the very rights liberties and duties of not only me and you but also numerous public and private stakeholders from public servants and corporations to health care providers and citizens. We must also recognize that most practical achievements of public health and the related research have been funded and sustained by governments and public institutions. Not only voluntarily, but also as a result of public health advocacy. While some of you may have considered this definition from the Oxford textbook to be bold and maybe overly reductionist. The current pandemic has made the deep intertwining of politics and public health very obvious, and also it's strong impact on our very daily lives. So advocacy is the conceptual framework, the mindset, and also kind of an attitude toolkit that helps us to translate scientific findings into political action. Simon Chapman was probably right when he said, it is the neglected sibling of public health, comparing, for example, the achievements of advocacy with. The ability and recognition in the public discourse. So, what is advocacy. It is the act of arguing or planning in favor of an issue or an idea that is thought enhance the well being of another person, a group or a population. I am advocating for advocacy with you at the moment, so that you become advocates for a good purpose in the field of drug prevention. The goal of advocacy is to create conditions that are conducive to health. And since the determinants of health are multi sectoral, and also the determinants of drug related disorders advocacy to must extend well beyond just the health sector. So, for example, it is also a means of social affairs. It may involve parent organizations and parent empowerment. It is a very broad communicative strategy, and also a recognized essential public health operation. The WHO just recently released 10 essential or defined the 10 essential public health operations and advocacy is part of two of them. The WHO states public health evidence basis stronger than ever before, but with that statement in mind, considering the wealth of scientific findings and their promises. One may wonder that we still do not have achieved the UN sustainable development goals, neither in Europe, nor globally. One may also wonder that prevention practice in Europe, although prevention is recognized as something important in the drugs field is not necessarily science based yet. So, part of the problem is the neglect of advocacy and many scientific findings, especially those without economic value are hardly or never recognized or understood by politicians and the general public. So, one reason may be that discourse and academic and public health circles is disciplined by principles of evidence and critical appraisal, fortunately, but publishing and scientific journals does not necessarily mean that anybody will ever read it, or cite it. They will not be recognized with a general public or outside the scientific community by politicians, for example, most people actually state that they inform themselves through the media. So if your scientific findings are not reported in the media, they won't be recognized normally. Now, by contrast to the academic public health discourse, the currency of advocacy is metaphor using analogies, symbols, and also efforts to present data and ways that are resonant and memorable to inexperienced target audiences. Connecting values that have a widespread support with your findings so that people understand and also have an emotional connection to why the solutions proposed to problems are important and relevant. One value that prevention has successfully been connected to in the past, for example, is that of economics. There may be no economic value in conducting prevention activities on first sight, obviously high cost involved if no preventative actions are taken. So this, for example, is one important value to appeal to another important value and I think in the history of humankind, this is really new and giving hope is that for the first time during this COVID-19 pandemic, the value of health has been put above economic interests on a global scale. So what strategies do we have and do we know so that we can inform our advocacy? Well, there are five very important ones and the overarching theme is that it involves campaigning for political regulatory or organizational change on the local, the district, the national or even on the international level. I think it is very important not to confuse advocacy with mere publicity. If there are no conflicting interests, then there's no point in just, you know, arguing for something, but especially in the drugs field, this is more difficult. Advocacy is also not lobbying, although often confused. While some organizations may lobby for or against a specific law to pursue their agenda, advocacy transcends one's own interests and also the interest of the organization. It is really arguing for a common good that goes just beyond personal or organizational interests. It becomes important advocacy when interests collide. So, for example, let's have a look at cannabis regulation and legalization. The cannabis industry may be interested in an unregulated market, whilst prevention practitioners or psychiatrists may be interested in a more regulated form of legalization. So here is it where advocacy comes into play. And it is also important to remind that the analytical sophistication possessed by most politicians and funding bureaucrats that whom we may address will rarely require any venturing into the complexities of the philosophy of science. So, such people need and want usually to paragraph answers to difficult questions like, do these school programs work, or will banning advertising reduce demand. They are often kind of slaves to simplify decision making processes as part of the political process that conspire against the very nature of scientific research and the highly intertwined nature of the results that are achieved. So, how can we inform our strategy? How do we, how can we better understand the political cycle? This framework is very old. It was actually proposed by Leswell in 1956. And it is not a theoretical framework in so far as that it predicts certain outcomes, but it is very useful and still use a lot in order to better understand the policy process. And also to understand in even if just one stage is, you know, trying to be influenced through an advocacy strategy, like what may go wrong during the process or where opponents of our strategy might try to intervene. So, for example, agenda setting, like bringing something on the agenda, making people, politicians aware of the importance of a certain issue, maybe through a report or a statement, a press statement issued by for example, the European Society for Prevention Research may lead to agenda setting, or it may influence the evaluation of a current practice, for example, the current prevention activities conducted in a certain community district or country. So, with this framework in mind, it becomes easier to understand like what strategies might be pertinent to take influence. But before I continue, I would like to ask you whether you have made some experience with advocacy in general. Let me just reset the results here. Please take your mobile if you have one, or go to a browser. You can go to menti.com and type in the code up here. This is an anonymous survey. I'm just really curious, whether you have used the policy cycle or not. If you ever try to influence one of these stages, you can also pick multiple ones. So, one may go beyond just merely having the policy cycle in mind when thinking of creating an advocacy plan or an advocacy strategy. One thing I would like to add to what I said before is that advocacy comes with a huge degree of responsibility, because integrity is a major part of the scientific endeavor, acknowledging ignorance, and informing your work through a set of values. It's not necessarily always the case with your opponents. And it is easy to become to fall victim to temptations of giving under complex answers to very complex issues. So goodwill is not enough. And it really also depends on a certain attitude and mindset, whether you are an advocate with integrity and a scientific mindset. So thank you very much. I'm happy that it works. We already have 70 answers. And I'm also quite happy to see that many of you already tried to take influence on several or some of the policy cycle stages. So maybe I didn't tell you news this morning, but I find it very encouraging. So let's move on in the few minutes that remain for me and have a look on theories of change. Because if we advocate for science-based prevention, we will probably be informed well or advised well to apply evidence to our advocacy as well. So I won't dive deep into the definition of theories of change, but I want to make clear, while advocacy is very interesting, many people may ask, can you prove to me that it actually works? And this is not working in a laboratory where you can clearly define the outcomes and the influencing factors, but it is, by contrast, working outside in the real world where you try to penetrate and repeatedly respond to decision-making environments that can literally change by the hour during periods of intense campaigning. That doesn't make it impossible to evaluate, but it makes it relatively difficult compared to, for example, pharmaceutical research in a very controlled setting. That being said, there are many theories that we can rely on. Some are more global theories, some are more tactical theories, some stem from social and communication psychology, others from policy research. But I would like to advise all of you who are interested in this topic to dive a little deeper. I will also provide a list of advice literature afterwards and have a look at, for example, the grassroots theory or media influence theory. Because this can be very useful to become efficient and also to have a means of evaluating whether the strategy you have will lead to some results. So thank you very much so far because I would love to have told some stories, but I would like to hand over to my colleague Trin who will dive a bit more into the question of how do you actually become an advocate? Trin, you have to flow now. Trin, you have to flow. And I think who is good who asked how do you educate policymakers if evidence-based prevention contradicts their strong convictions has been partly answered by Max already. And maybe Trin will answer it now in more practical terms. Go ahead, Trin. I don't know if I have the really thorough answer to this. I don't know if anyone has, but thank you. Good afternoon from my part as well. Thank you, Max, for your talks also engaging always. I wish we had more time to discuss the theories a bit more to hear all of your stories and experience. I'm here today to explore the nature of an advocate in prevention. So who is this person? How to become one? And please, you can comment in the chat. I'm sure Gregor looks into it all the time. So I believe it's wise to keep in mind that advocacy is not so much about intervention as communication. As Max said, many scientific findings, especially those without economic value or with vague economic value are hardly or never recognized or understood by politicians and decision makers. So prevention is one of those topics where outcomes and goals seem so far away and vague. That without making the topic simpler is a challenging to be heard. In prevention, our goal, our end goal is to see or inflict change in behavior and we know that this can take years. So it's really hard to make the decision makers to see what they can do in this short policy cycle. And how does this change happen? You need to influence both the social norms as well the environment where we live with the laws and regulations, because new structures allow people to think and behave in new ways. And it makes it possible for people to adapt new behaviors. And I think advocacy is a strong tool to affect those changes. And as Max already said, we need to consider at the policy cycle and understand that the reality is often messy and constantly changing. I see Max nodding. You agree with me. And the cycle is often too short to recognize bigger changes in public health and decision makers, especially in local level, they want to see clear cut goals. So what is achievable in the next four years, depending on the country, the cycle length. So, so we need to kind of answer those questions in our strategies. And how do we use this in our favor? I think one question is also, are people ready to listen? Are the opinion makers ready? We need to test this. Where are we in our stage? And I think Gregor already pointed out, and Max, that our current situation in the world makes us a perfect wind of opportunity. Because what we see now in the world is the moment, prevention-wise, that we see worldwide attention to mental health. And this is an excellent opportunity to advocate on behalf of drug prevention and risk-behaviour prevention, because the same interventions help us in both fields. So sometimes it's good to make these connections and to see the wider picture where our strategy fit in. So political climate is at the moment in favour of prevention. And we can try to make change and bridge the gap between science and policy. So the next question would be, do we know how to talk to people about it? And who to talk to about it? Do we need to talk to general public, decision makers, policy makers? Who is our target group? And I also quote again, Max, you said that you pointed out that not many people read scientific papers, guidelines, instructions. It's so true. So when we only make those, who will benefit from it? We need to make people heard. What tools can we use? And Greg already said that we use this European prevention curriculum to invite different parties to the shared table to discuss those wicked problems and interdisciplinary questions. So, but I want to do a little reflection task. And I wish to ask all of you who are now listening and thinking along. Think about when you were involved somewhere and you truly felt heard, involved, you had the chance to affect something you were able to express your thoughts. Please post in the chat so I can reflect on that later. And let's take a couple of seconds. So you have time to think when you were heard, when you felt. And what made this feeling or possible? What was in the process that made you feel you could express yourself? One, three, five. So in my experience, decision and opinion makers often have ideas, they have their constructs and they wish to be heard as well. So by listening, being humble, we will know what are their beliefs, attitudes, fears, goals. And we can make all the knowledge that we have relatable and simpler, uncomplicated, but there are things, some things to keep in mind. I think, for example, the goal setting and message design, which already Max reflected and I also said before, because prevention examples can be vague or polarizing or just too scientific. We need to remember that results or that our message needs to be achievable and understandable. I also want to explore the polarizing topic a bit more, because I have seen where we have had our experience that it's hard for people to come along when they feel stupid or when they feel cornered. So the question is how do we make them to think along in new ideas when the practice has been something else, a harmful, ineffective. And we see this happening in our trainings as well or when we discuss these ineffective or harmful practices and people struggle to find new ways to accept the data, the evidence, which is sometimes undisputable. And by facilitating these discussions, by listening, by asking the right questions, they finally find their own way of this new thinking. One thing that we discussed before when we were preparing for this webinar with Max, we also agreed that being an advocate does not mean that you have to know everything, that you have to be fluent in everything, in every topic. It's rather that you need to be able to explain complex constructs and these wicked problems in various ways, simple ways to make people hear you, to think along you. And the other thing that we discussed was that not everything can be controlled, so it's important to let them go. I think that we all have seen that sometimes policy cycle is not always in our favor, so what do we do? We have those different questions that the policymakers don't listen or our institutional, we are not strong enough in our organization, our ideas are not strong enough. The public opinion doesn't come along, there is no demand for good prevention, so how can we make change in that? The existing political administrative system, is it or is it not in our favor? When we have it, we can use it as much as we can. Also the experts, the facts, the science, when is the time for this? And how can we make the policymakers to want to hear more from the experts? And how can we teach or learn ourselves as experts to speak more clearly, to speak more engagingly? We have to accept that the change takes time and it's constant, and especially advocacy process. You can think of strategy for next two years, five years, but you have to be able to adapt. So it means creating allies, not being territorial, creating trust, making opportunities for others to take responsibility, speaking with people. I think the practicing, speaking, facilitating, asking questions is something that we can all benefit from. How we have all these experiences that when the topic is polarizing, you make mistakes, some people get angry, they are not agreeing with you. So what can I learn from that? I think advocacy is a lot about that. We have seen in Estonia that we want to achieve the shared understanding of prevention. We want to see that we agree on theory, we want to see the disciplinary and cross-sectoral approach. It has been taking us for six years. We constantly adapt in our process, create new allies, coalitions to work towards that. But we also know that you can have great interventions in different various settings, in schools, in workplaces, in family settings. But when you don't have the advocacy as part of your strategy, so what happens? Perhaps you lose your funding or there is no demand for these great evidence-based interventions. People don't know the practitioners are not familiar with it. So all this can be part of your strategy. And I think the last part would be that how do I evaluate that? Because a lot of times that focus is very vague and it's like talking to people and how do I know that I have gotten somewhere? So where do we change? First we can see change in demand, social norms. We see that you as a person or as an organisation have more credibility. You have more leverage. You create stronger allies, coalitions. People come behind this topic of our prevention. You see the support from the general public. And after a time, you see better decisions on policy level. But it does take time. It doesn't come tomorrow. You get tired. You need to reflect, learn, and this is a great opportunity for me to reflect on my experience. I think the question at the end is what are the most important issues in prevention for me? And what can I do to help? How can I make advocacy use? How to make things better? I think I've passed my time limit already. But I think that a person who is an advocate is also a good listener, is learning to be a good listener. Being humble, being open to mistakes and getting the flow of the process. Going with the process is so important. Thank you. Great. Now Marika will... Yes, thank you. As you have already noticed, Alexis Gousdil, our director, has joined us. He was taken by another fundamental meeting. Couldn't leave it before. But I would like it to invite him to say something to our attendees now. Thank you, Alexis. Thank you, Marika. Good morning, everybody. Well, I would like to thank very much Maximilian and Dream. They made an excellent presentation. I will not make the comments now. I will keep for the conclusion. But I would like to say two things. The first is that the topic of today is a top-level priority for EMC-DDA. And what I will try to share with you at the end of the webinar is that basically we have many challenges and opportunities in common with those working in the side of advocacy. And the best illustration is that we organize this webinar and we invite you to debate those points. So I think what I can say, without pretending we are the best and we do everything perfectly, still I think in the European Union we are lucky enough that we have both people working for advocacy. We have people working for prevention. But we have the chance that the legislator has decided to create a European Drug Monitoring Centre because one of the ways in which we can and we actually do mutually support with each other is that we have a role to play and we try to play in the best possible way. We are ready to change the way we play this role to mutually support because on the long term, decision makers, I agree with you, decision makers, whatever their level, they don't read science. This is why we don't call them scientists. We call them decision makers. They are just different. They are not bad. They are just different. And one of the main challenges that you and us we have is that we can have the best possible scientific evidence. We don't always ask ourselves even sometimes before to start to study or research. Okay, but what's the policy question and what are the things that we could share and what is the problem that the knowledge we have produced could help them to solve or to address. And basically, and I will leave you reflect on this until the end of this webinar. I think one of the key elements in our approach of decision makers is avoid to use too much the cortex and knowledge that because the first thing that speaks to them is trying to start from emotions. And the more we know, the more we have the tendency to balance a big bunch of information that they just cannot process. If we can find some kind of emotion in common and try to see how we can work together starting from that, I think on the very long term, it gives us better chances to get some concrete results. Thank you very much, Alexis. I will give the floor back to Gregor to go ahead with the webinar and we will wait for the final the conclusions remarks by our director in the end. Thank you. You're muted. Sorry, I will now give the floor and some questions also here from the question and session suit to some of our stakeholders, which are all master trainers of the UPC in a specific sector in their country. So for now, Eva and Buxich is a specialist in criminalistics and criminology, a lecturer at several faculties in the field of criminology, also several papers find focused on crime prevention. I'm a court-witting police officer in Croatia head of the crime prevention department in the Ossiak barangia police county and manager of several national crime prevention programs in the Republic of Croatia. So you see we have managed to get the UPC infiltrated into the law enforcement sector in Croatia, which is great because substance use prevention shares almost all risk factors with crime prevention. Now, Ivan, your question, the first question we have prepared is giving the situation of law enforcement, how can UPC and the advocacy session section help involving the police and evidence based interventions such as keeping schools and surroundings safe or as legislation about serving or selling to minors rather than engaging in a typical less evidence based interventions that lecturing students on the danger of substances. Ivan. Thank you very much. First of all, I would like to thank you for this opportunity and greetings to everyone present on this online webinar. In this short time, I will try to explain the role of policing decision making process. UPC has an important task to focus police work on evidence based interventions and to show the power of influence in decision making. In general, we can say that evidence based interventions have proven effectiveness or in effectiveness. In that way, we should know what to expect from project or intervention. On the basis of police work, we can divide it in two separate but linked ways preventive and repressive advocacy and decision making as important is important part of preventing work and is in focus, especially today in modern police. I can also agree that police is important part of society. And as such, part of their preventive work should be should have participation in prevention interventions and programs that are evidence based. It also includes evaluation, naturally, that is a scientific process, and it may seem that it is too complex or maybe too extensive. And that it is not part of early real police work, but police work is much more than just repression and law enforcement. But we need to ask ourselves, what is effective evidence based, what if effective evidence based intervention or project is not enough, what is police role in implementation of evidence based intervention. We already can hear here that police is crucial part of society. Other decision makers or policy makers should perceive the police as a key public security stakeholder and cooperation is a logical step. If that doesn't happen, police needs to impose as a key stakeholder by drawing attention on the problems in community to buy open openly communicate with community and other leaders in community. This way, police shows that they care. The throw comes from fact that police work is public. It is always under public attention. Therefore, police work has a great impact on community police officers, especially chief police officers have power to make changes in their community. At the same time, there are decision makers, policy makers, and also opinion makers in community. In the context of school as one of the micro level environment that serves as a key institution in shaping children's development. It is the focus on interventions that can be delivered wide range of beneficiaries from that same intervention. Police practice should not be focused only on education informing about dangerous giving advice or using various fear tactics. It should be focused on environmental prevention also. On that way, police could enforce policies are getting the use and sell off of all substances, including and I will fall on and near school grounds, and that all school sponsored events. It is something that should be part of universal intervention that focuses on all children without stigmatization. Police can achieve that by directly contacting such places shops or food bars something some places like that. If you are close to school, or if the shop is part of the bigger chain, police can contact manager or represent the problem during the meeting. It is also important to involve the school directly on that meetings should be someone from school principal psychologist or some other person, and there should be some other partners for example someone from social welfare and who are going to represent the problem from their point of view. Police has also impact on parents and on the meetings with parents police can represent them the problem and to advise them what to do. For example, what are the risks. That should be done as part of advisory board also. There is also opportunity to communicate with local community to try to try prevention partnerships. For example, there is one very important partnership in Croatia called crime prevention councils in the local community, in which police one is one of key stakeholders. In Croatia, police is also a leader in creating coalitions in this community, which can be decision making partnerships, or advocacy partnerships, or maybe some combination of both. Police is very important, and that can be seen in their universal task, which can be summarized as to protect and serve, and who is going police to protect and serve, other than all citizens, especially the most sensitive ones. In that context, it is possible to initiate legal changes that will prohibit the sale of addictive substances in the school radius. The process can be viewed as advocacy and from police point of view, general rule is to lower lower number of crime acts and lower fear, lower, lower level of fear of crime, and to make community safer place to live. I can conclude that police has power to make changes, alone or in partnership with other community stakeholders. Police can motivate community decision makers, but that process takes time. It cannot be done overnight. Trust has a big impact on that process. By using evidence based intervention goals can be achieved decisions for implementing that kind of intervention is very important, and the police has a big role in that process. Thank you. And there's still more questions, a concrete question by Brit Walsh. How do we address the challenge where politicians want a quick fix and conceptualize prevention as a once off drugs education. This must be something you are confronted with on a daily basis. Yes, there is something that is, I must say normal, because they usually want decision yesterday results today. So that is something that is not possible. There is something that needs to be explained that it is a process, a process that has a beginning has the middle and has the has the ending, and it is as you can watch, as you can watch further crime prevention. It takes one, two or three years period. So, in our point of view, it was very, very, very hard to explain that that is, that is a long time process. And for us, at the beginning, had a lot of problem with that. They expected that something can be fixed right away. As you have one crime and you find a person that is that crime and everything is all in crime prevention. So as you already know, so we had several meetings with politicians on a local level, so that we need to explain them that we need to start planning now activity in a few months and the results in a few years. So it was, it is a very, very big deal for them because they are always in that election period gracious for years. And in that four years they won the miracles in for short time. So it is not possible. Excellent. Thank you, Ivan. Now let's go to Belgium to Cynthia DeMang. Who is another master trainer, but this time from the education field, she's substance use specialist and master trainer through our partner project, and just long experience in training teachers about substance use prevention and supporting schools and developing proper substance use policies in the Flemish part of Belgium. Now Cynthia, your question is simple, and you all know it many schools may prefer short informational approaches, just been put forward as a question, rather than full programs or comprehensive school climate improvement. How can the UPC and the advocacy section and it helps schools in making better choices. Yeah, thank you Gregor. We can't blame schools for wanting short informational approaches. The people who make decisions about prevention in schools usually aren't experts in prevention science and intuitive they might presume that giving information and increasing knowledge about substances is a good idea, just like a lot of people falsely think that using scare tactics will convince young people not to use drugs. And the EUPC teaches us that these approaches don't work as schools will have more results with a multi component approach and in Belgium and in the Flemish speaking port. We have a good tradition with installing these multi component programs in schools as drug prevention professionals we help schools to develop a drug policy a substance policy that includes for strategies. The first one are environmental measures on general well well being the second one is a sound referral and care system with specialized organizations in the network for students who need help for substance use problem. The third strategy consists of installing clear and concrete rules and procedures, and at last an educational approach that focuses on attitudes but also on social norms and misperceptions instead of only increasing knowledge. I believe it's our job as prevention experts to talk with schools about what effective prevention is, because I think there is a lack of knowledge there on this topic and EUPC can help us in delivering this message. This is our responsibility as prevention professionals to make this theory understandable and easy to put in practice for schools. For example, in Flanders we developed an evidence informed guide from preschool till secondary school based on your PC that states very clearly which teams should and should not be discussed in class and which contents are effective based on simple dos and don'ts. The biggest perception of schools is that good prevention always cost a lot of time on money, but you can see shows that there are a lot of alternatives that are achievable for schools. The EUPC can really help us in our advocacy because it shows that it's possible for schools to implement evidence based interventions with feasible efforts. And schools will have more preventive results when focusing on multi-component approaches instead of choosing one-shot interventions. So that time and money will be better spent and I think that's a message we all like to hear. Great. Now, I think I go right ahead to Frederick, who comes also actually from the law enforcement sector. Frederick Regerot is senior advisor at the State Prevention Council, which is crime prevention in Lower Saxony in Germany, located in the Ministry of Justice of Lower Saxony, which is one of the 16 federal states in Germany. I think territorial wise the largest ones. And this State Prevention Council supports communities, which are then rather far away to establish evidence based prevention strategy on a local level, specifically with the communities that care model which you might know. Frederick is responsible for running a register of evidence based programs in Germany, the green list, which is basically the inspiration or a sister registry of our exchange registry. And he trains local stakeholders in the CDC model. So Frederick represents kind of the local policymaker sector that is engaging in EUPC advocacy. So Frederick, how can you be seen much local policy makers to favor evidence based local policy options and other hidden needs or thinking patterns we need to address, you know this field well to answer these questions. Yeah, yeah, thanks. Thank you, Gregor and thanks for the invitation and as I said, we have worked a lot in the last years with local policy makers, but I'm it's important to make sure that I'm not one of these kinds. So I'm talking about other people and other perceptions. And so what we have learned over the years is that there is very important to consider that there are local specific decision making cultures. I think it's, it's possible and I will try to over generalize this a little bit to say they're at least in Germany there are some common patterns of local decision makings but I'm sure that it's different in different countries and this this could be the whole answer to say let's consider the local decision making culture but but to see I will take into account two aspects that I think that that's a little bit more common at least in the German situation. The first one is that local policymaking decision making is much more consensus based and consensus oriented decision making on state or federal level so the people are more close together and that they have some that they don't like to deviate too much from the from the already existing consensus so so if you are trying to educate single decision makers on say statewide you can see or other prevention trainings you usually see the result that they come back to the community and don't be able to communicate what they have learned in this trainings even if they are convinced after this because they don't want to have this this conflicts within their their own peer group so this was one of the reasons we decided that we need to train the whole community coalition or the the group of stakeholders in that community so that to make the the group dynamics do the work to convince people so I like to remind an aspect that even brought in that if you have local coalitions local prevention councils groups of stakeholders already worked together. I think this is a good starting point to educate them as a group about some prevention principles and scientific based prevention and then you don't have to convince every single person that it's maybe not open to this then then you're if you're lucky you have some some champions that will advocate in this group for the other ones and I think this is a part of the the reasons why models like CDC and other ones can work because they rely on this on this dynamic and and the other aspect is that, at least in the German situation we see that local policy maker politicians are usually quite closely related to social service providers. So the prevention interventions in the communities are usually made by charities by social welfare organizations and politicians are quite close to them and mostly have some career before and this organizations and then changed to do policy and back and if the evidence based policy options are in competitions to that what the local prevention providers are already providing, then they are opting against evidence based intervention and options even if they may be open for this. So this is one of the reasons why we are worked strongly with models where we do a needs gap resource analysis in this community first to or enable them to do this, that they can see what are the specific gaps that they have in their existing service structure so that we can ask for or discuss about implementing new evidence based interventions in the in the gaps that are not competing with the already existing prevention structure so they are more open minded to do this and to develop models where the existing social service providers can adopt this new intervention so make them to their own so usually policymakers are wanting to do something positive for their community and they take this very literally they want to do something positive also for these organizations working there and if evidence based prevention is only relying on providers that are outside of the community. So they will not support this kind of options, but if you talk about something that I think the right word is community ownership of evidence based intervention and programs and make this to a strategy. It's much more open minded to do this. And I think this is a part that we need to develop a little bit more in the EU to see curriculum that the strategies for developing community ownership of evidence based prevention programs that they that I think it makes much more clear for for open minded local policy makers to up for this for this programs if they see that they can serve also their existing providers with this. Great, great answer. Thank you for that. Here comes a question by Byron guys that were friend from Cyprus. What if advocates and policymakers have different interpretations of the same facts due to different world roots. It's a specific question to add to someone of us or it to you. Then I put the question to the other people. Okay, okay, okay, sorry. So yes, this is usually the case that that we have differing different opinions on what about other facts. So, I think our, our way is to work on local specific solutions also to the work on local specific problem analysis to what is the problem here in this specific community what are their specific prevention needs, what needs to be done in this specific community and what are the available options that we have. This is why it's so important to have this list of evidence based prevention programs where you see that there are a lot of different prevention programs that could address this specific need or the specific problem and that they have a choice that it's not that we usually say there's only one single perception of a problem. It's not a single solution, but that we can offer them a menu of different options that are evidence based or more or less and that they are still in the situation that they decide. So, so I think this is important to have a mind that they are decision makers. And if there's only one option, then they are not in their role as decision makers and we need to support them in their role that they make decisions for the community and help them to make better decisions but not take them, take the decision away from them. And now I'd like to put some questions from the question answers to everyone there is one question put to three in by David Pressfield, but which I would also extend to Maximilia, because it's much more exposed to industry lobbying than other countries in Europe. The question was, can you comment on advocacy when there are strong multinational corporate interests lobby for unhealthy behaviors so it's not only alcohol and drugs. Isn't it an important factor that must be recognized and dealt with. Thank you very much for the question. My first encounter with lobbying was actually presenting a certain prevention approach in a circle of politicians and researchers, when there was a rise in youth hospitalizations, due to binge drinking in Germany. The recipient was invited from the beer brewing industry, which is very strong in Germany, and a very handsome good looking person. And, you know, when there were all these talks, and he had the last word and he just said, it's, it's just not true. He pulled the Donald Trump style and just said, you know, all the facts are wrong. But he was very convincing and everybody was like, Oh, who's that handsome person and so on. And he said and we're doing so much in the field of prevention and, and he just made his statements. And, and, you know, the way I report this incident is I don't remember the scientists presenting at this event, but I certainly remember this lobby guy. So it is very important to recognize that they are interest groups that may put more value on economic interest than you may put on the well being and thriving of young individuals. And this needs to be incorporated into your incorporated into your strategy. I think a lot can be learned really from the history of tobacco regulation, because industry was going so far they funded. They have the same in the climate discussion at the moment but there's a lot of funding of studies with the sole purpose of providing evidence that the mainstream is wrong. And to provide some excuses for why there should be no more regulation, for example, or no more investment into actually effective interventions that may reduce consumption. So, but really boils down to the discussion about values and which values are more important, because if the discussion is about liberalism and freedom of the market and so on, then you won't have a strong point. And if you succeed in emotionally connecting on a debate about health and such values and the development of children and so on, then it's much easier to make your point I think it's really important and especially in developing countries I have learned that the European industry is making devastating efforts in terms of advertisement and lobbying and so on, and this can be overwhelming to individuals. So, in such a case I think without strong coalitions, it is difficult to make a point. Your point. I was thinking that we often see industry where when they want to participate in prevention. They want to say that oh we this I don't know alcohol company anything we want to fund a school program mental health program. And to I think we need to be aware of that. And where what kind of programs or interventions we allow into our schools and who is behind it. I think it doesn't always. Well, the credibility they built their credibility I think we have seen that a lot. I think that's one of the program points. I was thinking also that we have seen in Estonia as well that it's all it's kind of useful to listen how they frame their, their opinions or their views. And we can learn from that, where to like how they influence the policy makers. And I think that learning from that is very useful. Yes, I agree with Max that definitely you need to be aware pre proactive and to anticipate that the industry wants to be involved as an interested in this part. Excellent. Great now I have a question for any panelists to choose to answer if you want or not this from an anonymous attendee civil society advocacy informed by the evidence is an important important part of a functioning democracy. The difference between elected politicians civil servants public servants civil society advocates needs to chance. However, civil society organizations funded by the state often dissuaded from advocacy by civil servants and public servants from advocating for evidence informed changes here might be the threat of the funding of the civil society organizations involved in advocacy. Do you have experiences of this problem or any strategies to address this problem because how can we be advocate when our actions may leave us without our job. Quite a long question. I may have some ideas but just in case nobody else one wants to contribute. Okay. Sorry short. Well, I think access the existential dimension of such efforts is very important to acknowledge. And I think Frederick already contributed to this aspect. When it's about, you know, advocating for new approaches when all the local service providers do not provide them and may may lose their jobs and not be able to pay their mortgage and this is these are really real life important things to the other is the more institutional aspect of advocating maybe as a member of the government and so on. And I think a solution on this side is more like really, for example, joining interest groups or societies like for example the European society for prevention research and contributing and participating for example in the formulation of a statement, but not, you know, being or stepping on the stage visibly as a person. So because this is your right in a democracy at least participate in civil society organizations and also contribute to their processes. So you need to protect yourself. And sometimes it is, it is very difficult if you're funded by by the government to be critical. Yeah, coming back to the other aspect I think I really like the idea of Frederick. And I've been talking about it as a kind of white label approach towards prevention programs. And I really see the future in providing kind of white label prevention programs that can, you know, that you can take and give your label and your brand and your logo and do some additions, although having the evidence base for the core aspects of it. That would be helpful for example. Now, a last question from our colleague Danilo, who says the EU drug strategy 20 the new one 2125 acknowledges you PC and it to be ques and then the UNODC international standards and drug use prevention, saying that it is, quote, important to disseminate these tools and advocate for evidence based prevention and training among the decision makes opinion leaders and practitioners and to allocate sufficient funding for such measures. Now, how do you see this useful, not enough. And how can this be implemented. That's a typical question from an informed policymakers we need an answer. Who dares Frederick. I'm not sure if I have a good answer for this. So I like to come back to the question before. And maybe this this this also leads to this question because Max already has pointed in this direction, how what kind of useful roles. There are international organizations in this case like us PR can can play in this in this case so that this kind of controversial teams I, I remember the paper on ineffective prevention approaches by by us PR can help in the local, organizations to to make the point on controversial teams that I can can say that this this is also legitimate point by an by an organization that it's more has the mandate to do this and it's not only our own perception and it's our own opinion on this this this this what is, what is the main consensus in the scientific field in this in this question. And I think this this leads also to the other question that we need more policy briefs of condensed information about what are the scientific results in some fields that are built in a way that that that it can can be used as a as a passport to in in different situations that that you have this have this legacy made it from and from an bigger organization to to advocate for this. And this is maybe we can we can develop more on more specific teams that we have done in for this. Can I add, I do agree with Frederick I think you answered quite thoroughly I think these tools give us in our each country is credibility that as you said it's not only our own but it's a common acknowledgement that this is needed. This is something that we need to go towards to, but I think also that these tools enable us discussions that we can use these as fast when we facilitate discussions and we need to get forward and without these, it's much harder. I also have a thought. Like, if you take a market perspective, what I have learned in Germany and in other countries is offering the EU PC on the basis of the assumption that there might be a real need these people might actually like to learn something opens an important door, because the reality is, for example in Germany, you have all these institutions that are by definition have having expertise and and responsibilities, but people working there might not necessarily have because they they've been studying something maybe public health but maybe something else. And they but they are they are now, you know, ought to be experts but they are not yet. And offering some guidance and some training and the UPC is just an example for that is is really important if you acknowledge ignorance that everything gets better. And what we experienced here that is a real demand so we had we had far more than 100 participants in a very short period of time during the pandemic in our seminars. And then people were very grateful, and they, and most of them were actually already experts. But this is something they are defined as but becoming an expert is a different thing. Yeah, so this is why I, I see this as something encouraging. Maybe to add something I know Gregor we are we are close but to to make a point for the EU PC, because for us the importance of the EU PC curriculum is that it's not coming from us. We have also the task to coordinate different stakeholders on a state level and usually we have the problem, they have, we have no common ground and they don't want to be on also on our side we need to have some some common ground and the EU PC helps us to communicate that it's not from us it's not about coming to our side this is the, this is the decided or is it's an offer to talk about things, and to to make things clear for others they call us and not only talk about our approaches but also take into account the other approaches and say, let's use the EU PC as our common ground. I think this is the most important achievement of the EU PC in our situation. Thank you very much Frederick very nice to say that very good idea now. Let's listen to the concluding remarks by our dialect our director Alexis for the remaining time. Thank you very much for your great answers to very interesting questions. Alexis. Yes, thank you Gregor. Thank you all. I think this was a fantastic webinar. And I would say that I invite all the speakers for whenever you want. And please don't hesitate to take the initiative to have a further discussion. I really loved your comments and presentation. Maximilian, you probably know or don't know that we have been working and produced our own theory of change about what the EMCD is trying to aim at a few years ago. So I think plenty of things we as I say we have in common and that we really need and want to discuss with you in the coming months. I've been looking at the list of participants and I want once more before to conclude thanks and say hello to all our friends from all over the world. I've seen some of them that I've not seen for a long time, like some friends from Georgia and other countries. We have a very famous colleagues participating. One of them I had the pleasure and the privilege to see him again after many years. It's Elisardo Baconia. We see from Spain who's in the list. It could be one. It should be one of the speakers for one of the next webinars. We had a fantastic meeting few weeks ago in Spain online. So, two or three concluding remarks. I would love to comment each presentation. Don't worry. I will not do. We don't have time. I would start first with one of the last points of Frederick, which is the consensus, which I think it's always easier at local level than at regional or national one. But I think it's extremely important that the challenge for for the advocacy, but also for those who promote the scientific evidence. I don't mean that you don't promote scientific evidence, but you are doing advocacy. We don't. The reason we work together is that you, we need to be ready to accept that the consensus will not always be the highest possible or the strongest ambitious consensus. So this means when we try to work with local consensus, we need to be ready to accept the results, if even if some of us may have more ambitious expectations. And I think what is important with those projects is that I think that's the really the perfect illustration of what I suggested before, which is when I'm thinking about two meetings I've been involved. There was about a rock or musical festival with some local stakeholders and authorities. And the other was was in a municipality or in a city where there was a new drug consumption room to be open. And it was not yet sure if this would have a really positive legal status or not. In both cases, I think we have been in the in a position to to to give upon request additional scientific evidence. But in fact, the request was more based on emotions and fears about what would be the risks if we do differently. What are the risks if we if we use a UPC. And the conclusion is that we should, for instance, include some bill checking in the in the music festival, because there have been a few dead case in the past. And even if it is not officially allowed to consume to get this public health approach or harm reduction but it's not only harm reduction actually, it's really the values as Maximilian was saying. The values are that we want to preserve the lives of our children. Maybe at local level it's more easy to have some discussions. And if we can make use of the evidence if there is evidence to show that okay they are negative emotions potentially and some fears and decision makers they need to to assume their responsibilities. It's not always easy. They need to take some risks. Scientific evidence can be useful, but but only if if we give a place to these emotions. Now, if we have a if there is a problem of values that is always much more challenging. We will come in further. Now, for me, what I have observed many times is the fact that if we manage to articulate emotions, the facts, the scientific evidence, and we can put them into perspective of the risks and the decisions. I think we sometimes may have better chances. I really believe that if we don't recognize the risks. And if we don't recognize the emotions from the side of those who are more reluctant to innovate or to change. We can try to kill that with knowledge but it never works. And I don't even think that that's a useful approach. Of course, I don't mean that's what you are doing. Overall, this requires also a lot of different talents from all of us and to join the forces. So this was the first point. A second experience that I've noticed observed and I experienced myself some, so many years ago is that sometimes when I am a psychologist, a clinical psychologist from background. When I tried to speak with pharmacists to promote the kids with the syringes in Brussels region, a psychologist had no chance to be taken really seriously into consideration by the association of pharmacists. Or at least you make it the challenge very difficult. So we use the peer approach. So peer approaches not only for and with people using drugs. It was using the pharmacist of the Lagood door in France, where they launched the initiative to have the stereo kit or the stereo box being produced. And when we managed to invite one pharmacist to speak to other pharmacists, certainly the look at him and the attention they paid to him was very different. Also, we are very lucky that we have a UPC because one of the things we need to continue to do is to share positive experiences from elsewhere. Again, there it's not only to sell success story, I would say again, it's more risk reduction or fear reduction. So if we can give facts about the fact that, for instance, the criminalization in Portugal has not led to an increase in drug use, everybody was against what's pretending 20 years ago. If we have a scientific evidence about the positive results, you can help to then start discussing about something much more concrete about what can we do together. So, I really liked what you mentioned about labor, I will not discuss but I think, as you did, we are also contributing to labeling the best practice and we could imagine further cooperation on this. Last comment before my final statement or proposal. I think what has changed any UPC fully supports that is that we should involve the peers, whoever those peers are, and I frequently have to remind some decision makers that you know when you are 25 years old, for those who are 14, you are already an old guy. And so if you are 60 like me, there is no change that I can pretend I can understand the way they feel, the way they don't feel, the way maybe they are depressed because of COVID and the lockdown and so on. So, to keep this belief that we know we have a knowledge, and then we need to balance on the head of the others who should receive this fantastic knowledge. UPC helps to break that, but we need to make the case every time more to make sure that either the students from the school or people using drugs or any kind of substance. Well, the clients of the services, they are a fundamental partner element of the program. And then what I'm happy to say and also I'm sorry, I really could not be the first five minutes of the meeting. I have not stopped meetings today since eight this morning, but I want to say that first, as I said, that's a top priority for us. We have the new plateau project that is supporting us up and that is supporting the UPC. We want to build with you the future distance learning and capacity building in prevention today, but also in the future. I think we need distance learning. One of the key features for us is the community of practice. And also the important point. I take this from what Maximilian say is a TMCD we we try not to be too much institutionally arrogant, which means that we don't pretend we are the experts who know it all. And we are very much aware that our expertise is only depending or can only be judged. If you look at our capacity to mobilize experts from the field and from the Academy. Your presence here is a proof of evidence of that. I think that for for the future of capacity building on demand reduction because I think ultimately should not be only on prevention. We need to have more co-production. What we managed to contribute with the UPC and us up. I think we, we are very lucky you gave us this opportunity to do that with you. We try to give support, we try to provide some other value. And I want to tell you clearly that we are fully committed to continue to work with you and to increase the community of practice on those practices on those values and on those methodologies. And I hope that this year we will have other webinars on more specific topics. And why not one day, maybe not this year, but before next year to have one about the UPC and rock festival for instance, because I can tell you that the meeting with local decision makers that I attended one year ago just before the start of the pandemic. Was a bit challenging one. I can say it was not an easy one. So thank you very much.