Harm reduction initiatives improve the lives of people using drugs, but the problems that they are facing differ from country to country, region to region, city to city, even from neighbourhood to neighbourhood. Initiatives that work well in one setting cannot be simply implemented in another setting.

Besides different local situations, health problems pop up instantly and can change rapidly over time. Many public health problems require a quicker response than traditional scientific research generally allows. This has led to the development of so-called Rapid Assessment approaches. The core of this approach is the set of Rapid Assessment and Response (RAR) guides developed by the Centre for Research on Drugs and Health Behaviour at the Imperial College in London for WHO and UNAIDS. Trimbos Institute and CVO refined this method and built a data management tool to enable people who are not scientifically trained to use RAR. This resulted in this manual to map problematic substance use quickly and accurately and generate priorities and ideas for interventions.

On several Correlation conferences in the past years introductions and workshops on the Rapid Assessment and Response method were presented.

Please find attached an online manual to carry out a Rapid Assessment and Response manual to map the situation and develop public health responses for your local situation. The manual contains analysis tools to process the information you collect during the Rapid Assessment and Response process.

We hope you will start to use the tool in the future and we are willing to help and assist you during your Rapid Assessment and Response process.

read more: RAR manual substance use and addiction – pdf

Richard Braam
Hans Verbraeck
CVO Research & Consultancy
Utrecht, the Netherlands
cvo@drugresearch.nl
www.drugresearch.nl