Making voices heard: access to health and social services for substance users.

One of the fields of activity of the Correlation network over the past few years has been to stimulate and support the development of comprehensive national policies on social inclusion and health promotion targeting marginalised populations. The ‘ policy group’ of the network discussed effective approaches to contribute to that aim and stimulated the development of research in that area. The Research Institute on Drug Studies (RIDS) in Hungary centred its research on barriers to access to social and health treatment for problem drug users currently out of treatment. The main goal of the survey carried out by Foundation Mainline in The Netherlands was to find out what barriers Moroccan hard drug users in Amsterdam encounter when they intend to enter different forms of (drug) care. The survey of the Initiative for Health Foundation in Bulgaria aiming to identify means of treatment of drug dependencies and the barriers obstructing the access among problem drug users. The Institute of Public Health in Slovenia was especially interested in the possibility for participation of drug users in different research phases and in the final political discussion. On content level, key research questions were whether assistance programmes are sufficiently accessible to drug users and what the users experience as barriers to obtaining general and specialised help offered by the health care, social and non-governmental sector. In the final section gives recommendations and provides a basic toolkit on how to use research n the political debate