Dr Ferrer is a specialist on clinical psychology and expert on health promotion. Working in addictions since 1978, he has been linked to prevention and research in the field of higher education, organizing seminars on addictions at the University of Barcelona (UB) (1978-85), and published a proposal (1983) to create a multidisciplinary specialist course on addictions at the University level. In 1986, the UB approved the creation of such a postgraduate Master Degree on Drug Dependence: http://www.ub.edu/drogodependencies/es/. He is currently Director, finishing his 32nd year. Since then, more than 600 professionals belonging to more than 10 different professions and 15 countries have graduated. The degree includes a wide range of interventions (from a traditional therapeutic approach to harm reduction and, of course, prevention), and a large cooperation scheme with public and NGO programs, with more than 45 centers available for the students' internship, which cover more than half of the 82 ECTS (European Credit Transfer and Accumulation System) of the Degree.
Apart from his position as UB, Xavier Ferrer is the Executive Director at FSC (Foundation Health and Community), (www.fsyc.org) a professional-led NGO operating in Spain, now employing 1600 professionals in more than 130 centers and programs, including 37 focusing in addictions. The FSC also runs programs for victims of social exclusion, abused women, former prisoners, the elderly, mental patients, and more. In the drug field, he has been both designing new centers and working personally in outpatient settings, harm reduction, safe injection rooms, therapeutic communities, and more. In prevention, he has been active in drug abuse prevention at school, and researched on prevention through the family and the media. In the mid-1990s, he coordinated the PHARE project on Drug Demand Reduction for the European Commission, which opened cooperation with the countries of Central and Eastern Europe before their incorporation to the Union.
