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The interdisciplinary conference Treading the Path to Human Rights. Gender, Substance Use and Welfare States focuses on the current status, the changes that are happening and the future of policy and services to people with problematic substance use in European welfare states. Special focus is on the Nordic countries with regards to human rights, gender, harm reduction and the social factors affecting substance use and policy development. Discrimination on the grounds of race, class, gender, sexuality, and gender inequality will be on the agenda in line with appeals from international organizations and people using substances. Special emphasis is put on the necessity of mainstreaming gender into drug and alcohol policy, considering particularly the needs of women and LGBTQI people. The conference is organised by Rótin and RIKK – Institute for Gender, Equality and Difference at the University of Iceland.
The aims of the conference are to raise awareness of the importance of policy making in the field, gather professionals, policy makers, and other players to share their knowledge and views on policy development in the substance use field and learn from lecturers from European countries.
Treading the Path to Human Rights. Gender, Substance Use and Welfare States
Hotel Reykjavik Grand
17–18 October 2023
Programme
17 October
08.30–09.00
Registration and coffee
09.00–12.00
Gender and Drug and Alcohol Policy in Present and Future
Moderator: Helga Bjargar Baldvinsdóttir
Opening Speech
Willum Þór Þórsson, Minister of Health
Keynote: ‘You Can’t Fix This in Six Months’. The Intersectionality of Women’s Substance Use
Sarah Morton, Director of the Community Drugs Programme, College of Social Sciences and Law, University College Dublin
The Public Stigma of Mental Illness and Substance Use
Sigrún Ólafsdóttir, Professor of Sociology, University of Iceland
Coffee
Panel Discussion: Gender and Drug and Alcohol Policy in Present and Future
Participants: Sarah Morton, Arndís Anna Kristínardóttir Gunnarsdóttir, Parliamentarian and Human Rights Lawyer, and Heiða Björg Hilmisdóttir, City councillor in Reykjavík and head of the Welfare committee, Chair of the Icelandic Association of Local Authorities, Sigrún Ólafsdóttir
Moderator: Helga Bjargar Baldvinsdóttir
12.00–13.00
Lunch
13.00–16.40
Policy, Harm Reduction and Culture
Moderator: Hjördís Tryggvadóttir, Psychologist
Harm Reduction and Health Services in the Icelandic Prison System
Sigurður Örn Hektorsson, Chief Physician at the Directorate of Health, Iceland and an expert in family medicine, addiction medicine and psychiatry, and Helena Bragadóttir, MSc. Psychiatric nurse – Former Team leader in NHS Prison Mental Health Team, Iceland
Status Report on the Comprehensive Review of the Service Processes, Concept, Content, and Quality of Health Services for People with Problematic Substance Use in Iceland
Helga Sif Friðjónsdóttir, Advanced Practice Nurse with a focus on addiction and Deputy Director General of the Ministry of Health
Keynote: Preventing and Reducing Substance Use-Related Harm in the Welfare State [The lecture is delivered online]
Matilda Hellman, Professor of Sociology, Uppsala University, Research Director, University of Helsinki, and Editor-in-Chief of Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs (NAD)
Coffee
Keynote: Cultural Perspectives on Women’s Use of Drugs. A Feminist Approach to Everyday Drug Use
Emma Eleonorasdotter, Lecturer in Ethnology at Lund University
Panel discussion: Policy, Harm Reduction and Culture
Participants: Emma Eleonorasdotter, Helga Sif Friðjónsdóttir, Sigrún Ólafsdóttir, Sigurður Örn Hektorsson and Helena Bragadóttir
Moderator: Margrét Valdimarsdóttir, Associate Professor in Sociology and Criminology, University of Iceland
18 October
08.30–09.00
Registration and coffee
9.00–9.30
Keynote: Recent Development in European Drug Policy [The lecture is delivered online]
Danilo Ballotta, Coordinator for Institutional Affairs and Senior Policy Analyst at European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction (EMCDDA)
Workshops – Treading the Path to Human Rights
Moderator: Halldóra Dýrl. Gunnarsdóttir, Gender Equality Specialist, The Reykjavík City Office of Human Rights and Democracy
9.30–10.30
Workshop: What Is Culture and What Does It Have to Do with Drug Policy? A Critical View on the Gendered and Classed Aspects of Drug Policy
Facilitator: Emma Eleonorasdotter
Coffee
10.45–12.00
Workshop: Policy Development. Gender, Harm Reduction and Policy Change
Facilitator: Sarah Morton
Sponsors:
Ministry of Health in Iceland (Main sponsor)
Ministry of Welfare in Iceland
CV’s and Abstracts
Willum Þór Þórsson, Minister of Health
Keynotes
Danilo Ballotta
Danilo Ballotta is institutional affairs coordinator and principal policy analyst at the European Drug Agency (EMCDDA) and has worked in the field of international drug policy for more than 25 years. Danilo represents the EMCDDA at the EU Working Group on Drugs of the Council of the European Union (HDG), at the Pompidou Group and liaises with the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs processes. Within the EMCDDA policy section, he supports the evaluation and development of strategies of national and European drugs policies.
Lecture: Recent Development in European Drug Policy [The lecture is delivered online]
At times when the phenomenon of drugs is challenging at World level, the European Union promotes a common approach in the field of drugs seen as pragmatic, balanced and based on scientific evidence, and which has the merit of having created during the years a ‘soft convergence’ between policies of EU Member States. There is however a pressing need for a wider alliance toward this same common view in which human rights can go hand in hand with the objective of a healthier and more secure drugs policy.
Emma Eleonorasdotter
Emma Eleonorasdotter holds a Phd in Ethnology and is a lecturer and researcher at the Department of arts and cultural sciences at Lund University, Sweden. Her research revolves around cultural perspectives on inequalities, specifically regarding licit and illicit drug consumption. Her dissertation “Det hade ju aldrig hänt annars” Om kvinnor, klass och droger (2021) is an ethnography about twelve Swedish women, 25-65 years old, who use drugs in their everyday lives. It explores themes such as legitimacy, addiction, medicine, children and happiness, and has been reworked and will be published in English during the fall 2023. The title is Women’s Drug Use in Everyday Life [Palgrave, in press].
Lecture: Cultural Perspectives on Women’s Use of Drugs. A Feminist Approach to Everyday Drug Use
This lecture revolves around the topic of women’s everyday use of drugs, and the insights a class and gender sensitive ethnography on everyday drug use can contribute with to the knowledge on the role of drug use in contemporary consumer societies. Attention will also be paid to the legal, historical, socioeconomic, gendered, classed and cultural backgrounds to the meanings and practices of drug use. The lecture will draw examples from eight years of research in Sweden, resulting in a PhD thesis in Swedish and a book in English, “Det hade ju aldrig hänt annars”: Om kvinnor, klass och droger (2021) and Women’s Drug Use in Everyday Life (2023), both published Open Access (but the later book might still be in press).
Workshop: What Is Culture and What Does It Have to Do with Drug Policy? A Critical View on the Gendered and Classed Aspects of Drug Policy
Culture is an everyday concept, but when looked at more closely it is not easy to define. Yet culture is the base for any creation of policy. If policies are not based on shared feelings, opinions, practices and “common sense”, they are doomed to fail. This workshop offers an in-depth exploration of the concept of culture, and group discussions on how a critical, cultural perspective can shed new light on policies that are important in the (working) lives of the participants of the workshop. What society and what values are implicit in them, and where are they heading? Prepare for the workshop by bringing texts (translated to English), documents, formulations and/or thoughts regarding policies relevant to your work/life.
Matilda Hellman
Professor in sociology, University of Helsinki, researcher in social, sociohistorical, and cultural understandings and articulations of addiction, lifestyles, health, deviance, and social marginalization. Her research has focused especially on how political and popular discourse as well as governance practice and institutions embed views on questions such as drug use, alcohol policy, gambling, brain-based addiction and how it effects individuals, groups and societies. Hellman is the director of the research group University of Helsinki Centre for Research on Addiction, Control and Governance (CEACG), guest researcher at the National Institute for Health and Welfare (THL) and editor-in-chief for Nordic Studies on Alcohol and Drugs (NAD).
Lecture: Preventing and Reducing Substance Use-Related Harm in the Welfare State [The lecture is delivered online]
How has the Nordic welfare state typically dealt with substance use and addiction and what are new challenges in the 2020s? The ways in which we prevent and reduce harm caused by substance use has followed certain views on the problem’s nature (social, medical etc) and on whom they concern (individual, certain groups, society at large etc.). New challenges are both epistemic and organizational to their nature: the problems are understood differently and it has become more complicated to organize and synchronize policies and help structures.
Sarah Morton
Vice Principal for Teaching and Learning for the College of Social Sciences and Law and Director of the Community Partnership Drugs Programme. She has extensive experience in policy, practice and outcome evaluation in relation to addressing complex issues including domestic and sexual violence and drug and alcohol use. She sits on the National Oversight Committee for the National Drug Strategy and her research interests include the intersection of substance use and violence, as well as creative and participative research methodologies.
Lecture: ‘You Can’t Fix This in Six Months‘. The Intersectionality of Women’s Substance Use
This presentation outlines the approach and findings of an IRC funded research project that sought to explore the experiences and support, and intervention needs of women who are dealing with multiple issues, including problem substance use, with a view to gaining an in-depth understanding of women’s life experiences, substance use trajectories and how these relate to factors such as motherhood, poverty, social exclusion, domestic violence, transactional sex, homelessness and incarceration. The presentation will highlight some of the unique aspects of women’s experiences, as well as exploring the potential actions that would improve drug policy and service responses to women. The study was funded under the Irish Research Council New Foundations programme that supports academic and non-governmental organisations (NGO) partnerships in order to address critical issues emerging within the Irish context.
Workshop: Policy Development. Gender, Harm Reduction and Policy Change
The mechanisms and processes of drug policy change are often complex. Using Seddon’s (2006) understanding of drug policy development, this workshop provides participants with the opportunity to explore key potential drug policy issues within Iceland. Using Seddon’s (2006) concepts of structure, culture and agency, examples of drug policy development in Ireland will be presented, particularly in relation to gender and to harm reduction, with an opportunity to discuss and explore how useful these ideas and examples may be useful within the Icelandic context.
Lecturers
Helena Bragadóttir
Helena Bragadóttir, is a RN (Registered Nurse) MSc. Psychiatric nurse and Team leader in NHS Prison Mental Health Team, Iceland. Helena has worked in various wards at the National Hospital of Iceland from 2009-2018. Both inpatient wards, outpatient departments and others. Helena’s work has focused on people with problematic substance use and concurrent psychiatric illness. Helena has just left her post as a team leader in Prison Mental Health Team; a service that the Minister of Health launched in the beginning of 2020 within the NHS in Iceland and was new at the time.
Lecture: Harm Reduction and Health Services in the Icelandic Prison System (with Sigurður Örn Hektorsson)
Helga Sif Friðjónsdóttir
Advanced Practice Nurse with a focus on addiction and Deputy Director General at Ministry of Health, Ph.D, APMHN, RN, Adjunct and Clinical Assistant Professor at University of Iceland. Helga Sif has throughout her professional life been passionate about quality communication, human dignity, equality, change, motivation and quality of healthcare. She has focused on developing and redesigning mental health and addiction services as well as teaching and training mental health nurses of the future in Iceland. Because of her pioneer work in harm reduction in Iceland she was invested with the Order of the Falcon in 2021 by the President of Iceland.
Lecture: Status Report on the Comprehensive Review of the Service Processes, Concept, Content, and Quality of Health Services for People with Problematic Substance Use in Iceland
In the spring 2021, the Minister of Health decided to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of service processes, ideology, content, and quality of healthcare services for people with substance use disorders. During the data collection phase, emphasis was placed on examining international standards, clinical guidelines, and research. Meetings were held with representatives from various interest groups to shed light on the specific needs of different groups regarding healthcare services for substance use disorders. These meetings also provided insight into the experiences of different groups relating to current systems and identified areas where improvements were needed to meet their service needs.
Sigrún Ólafsdóttir
Sigrún Ólafsdóttir is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Iceland. Her research lies at the intersection of medical, cultural and political sociology. In her research, she has, among other things, examined health inequalities from a comparative perspective, stigma toward mental illness, public preference for use of mental health services and the medicalization of mental health. Her work has appeared in journals including the American Journal of Sociology, European Sociological Review, Journal of Health and Social Behavior and Social Science and Medicine. She leads Iceland´s participation in three international social surveys (European Social Survey, European Values Study, and International Social Survey) and was the editor of Acta Sociologica from 2019-2023. She has hosted the Icelandic sociology podcast, Samtal við Samfélagið, for the past five years.
Lecture: The Public Stigma of Mental Illness and Substance Use
Sigurður Örn Hektorsson
Chief Physician at the Directorate of Health, Iceland and an expert in family medicine, addiction medicine and psychiatry
Lecture: Harm Reduction and Health Services in the Icelandic Prison System (with Helena Bragadóttir)
Moderators
Halldóra Dýrl. Gunnarsdóttir
Gender Equality Specialist, The Reykjavík City Office of Human Rights and Democracy
Hjördís B. Tryggvadóttir
Psychologist and Team Leader at Teigur, Department of Mental Health and Addiction, National University Hospital of Iceland
Margrét Valdimarsdóttir
Associate Professor in Sociology and Criminology, University of Iceland
Panellists
Arndís Anna Kristínardóttir Gunnarsdóttir
Parliamentarian and Human Rights Lawyer
Heiða Björg Hilmisdóttir
City councillor in Reykjavík and head of the Welfare committee, Chair of the Icelandic Association of Local Authorities