From the 2024 Global Conference held in Thessaloniki, Greece.
Author: Dr. Fernando Salazar
Objective: Evaluate the adaptation and fidelity to the UPC of the Higher Technician in Prevention Career in Paraguay.
Rationale: The need for professionals for the implementation of prevention interventions led Paraguay to propose a career for Higher prevention technicians based on the UPC and following the standards of the Ministry of Education and Science (MEC). The design of this career incorporated elements of prevention and implementation sciences, international quality standards, and ethical aspects to achieve quality professional performance. Likewise, the career of technicians in prevention must meet the standards of the MEC, which require a balance between theoretical and practical training.
Methodology: The career has four areas of General and basic training, Specific or technical, Elective, and Professional Practice, in these areas, the contents of the UPC were incorporated and for the evaluation of adaptation and fidelity, templates were prepared to contrast the contents of the career with those of the UPC and it was observed if the core contents of the UPC and specific interventions were maintained and if their distribution did not affect their content.
Results: The contents of the UPC and the specific interventions were preserved in their entirety; the Introduction to Prevention Science of UPC was distributed in two consecutive courses due to time limitations in the academic semester; ethics and the UNODC international quality standards are presented as transversal contents throughout the training; the course on monitoring and evaluation of UPC was distributed in courses on research methodology, epidemiology and statistics, and transversally in the professional practices. The practices given at the end of each semester sequentially cover local diagnostics, planning, implementation and monitoring, and evaluation of results.
Conclusion: The Higher Technician Career preserves with fidelity the UPC contents and most of the content adaptation is based on the epidemiology and sociocultural aspects of Paraguay.