Project description
Alcohol use disorders and depression in Latin America
Latin America faces a significant challenge in the form of alcohol use disorder (AUD) and comorbid depression. These interconnected conditions have a profound impact on individuals, families and communities, contributing to the burden of non-communicable diseases in the region. The EU-funded SCALA project tackles the critical issue of AUD and comorbid depression in Latin America. By leveraging primary healthcare as an integrated delivery platform within municipal settings, SCALA implements evidence-based approaches to prevention and management. Through capacity building and training for healthcare professionals and stakeholders, along with municipal-based adoption and support mechanisms, the project aims to reduce the burden of these conditions and their associated non-communicable diseases.
Objective
Following the strategic approach of the Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases (GACD) to support optimal approaches to implement existing knowledge, SCALA implements and evaluates an evidence-based approach to scale up prevention and management of Alcohol Use Disorders (AUD) and comorbid depression, using primary health care (PHC) as the integrated delivery platform, embedded within municipal settings. SCALA uses different capacity-building and training approaches for a range of health care professionals and other stakeholders and municipal-based adoption and support mechanisms for joined-up action to improve health literacy, and to prevent and manage AUD and comorbid depression, reducing the burden of their attributable non-communicable diseases (NCDs). Implemented in three countries of Latin America (Colombia, Mexico and Peru), SCALA facilitates country-specific priority setting for interventions that capture health and economic costs and benefits with a long-term perspective, to ensure best-buy programme and policy decisions that lay out the pathways for scaling up in other countries of the region, and, further, globally. SCALA supports implementation of the WHO Mental Health Action Plan 2013-2020, using primary health care as the platform for the prevention and management of AUD and comorbid depressive disorders, closing treatment gaps, and reducing stigma and social exclusion. SCALA contributes to UN Sustainable Development Goal 3 as a whole, and, in particular 3.5 that strengthens the prevention and treatment of the harmful use of alcohol.
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Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
6200 MD Maastricht
Netherlands