EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
In 2018, a project “Developing community capacity to deliver harm reduction services to people who use meth in Vietnam” was developed by the Centre for Supporting Community Development Initiatives (SCDI) in Vietnam with technical assistance from Mainline, the Netherlands. The project responded to the rise of crystal methamphetamine use in Vietnam and the social and health concerns it caused. The goal of this project – executed between September 2018 and October 2020 – was to strengthen the capacity of outreach workers of communitybased organisations (CBOs) in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City (HCMC) in harm reduction to people who use meth and community-based mental health screening and referral to treatment. This evaluation examines the acceptability and feasibility of the project.
This evaluation – supported by Mainline and Aidsfonds, the Netherlands – provides relevant evidence to strengthen current harm reduction training and intervention programs and can be used to advocate for scale-up in Vietnam and the Asian region. The evaluation has four specific objectives: To review the existing literature on effective ATS interventions among key populations including necessary skills and knowledge; To describe the actual implementation of harm reduction intervention for key populations who use methamphetamine To investigate the acceptability and feasibility of the implementation, factors of success and potential challenges for scaling up the implementation To examine the impact of the training program in enhancing the capacity and confidence of ORW delivering harm reduction intervention.
To achieve the objectives above, a desk review of outreach journals and monthly reports of CBOs, 19 in-depth interviews and 3 focus group discussions with a total of 36 key informants, and a literature review was conducted. The literature review showed that psychosocial interventions and harm reduction remained the key strategies to reduce the harms related to meth use, given pharmacotherapy was unavailable yet for meth abuse. Among psychosocial interventions, the effectiveness of motivational interviewing, contingency management, and cognitive-behavioural therapies has been solidly documented. The review also showed a paucity of research on ATS interventions in low-and-middle-income countries (LMIC), especially on ATS harm reduction. The review indicates that the interventions (motivational interviewing, outreach and peer-based interventions, mental health screening, brief interventions, and referral to treatment) delivered in 6 this project are evidence-based and important to fill in the gap of community-based interventions, especially harm reduction for people who use meth in LMIC.
