By ALESHA CAPONE
A VICTORIA University associate professor is embarking on a landmark project to gather data on drug use across the West.
Associate Professor Craig Fry from the Centre for Cultural Diversity and Wellbeing, located at the university’s Footscray campus, said more research was needed into substance abuse within Brimbank, Hobsons Bay, Maribrynong, Melton and Wyndham.
Associate Professor Fry is convenor of the new Western Alcohol and Other Drug Health Research Network (WAODHRN), consisting of researchers and practitioners advocating for a “more informed and comprehensive response to the region’s drug and alcohol problems”.
Associate Prof Fry said he was presently working on a proposal to develop a Western Region drug trends monitoring system, in conjunction with others from WAODHRN.
“Our main aim is to discover what’s happening in that illicit drug space and how service providers can use that information to improve or adapt their services,” he said.
He said he expected to start a small pilot for the drug monitoring system towards the end of 2013.
“We will probably select one or two locations or suburbs where we suspect, know – or where frontline workers say – there are current drug issues and see how it goes from there, and hopefully eventually role it out to other suburbs across the West,” he said.
He said the system would gather information directly from drug users through online surveys and other data-collection methods, expert interviews with workers and service providers and available statistics.
In August, a network of health organisations and city councils called the HealthWest Partnership launched a report into injecting drug users called ‘No longer just an inner city issue’.
The HealthWest project manager of alcohol and other drugs, James Dunne, said across the past 20 years the population of the West had rapidly grown – but demand for alcohol and drug services “has increased without the funding to match”.
“The critical issue is that there are not enough services across the West to respond to this growth in demand,” he said.
“We would like to see more primary and secondary needle syringe programs across the West to help people access injecting equipment when they need it without having to travel long distances.”
