Mr Andrew McAuley
Senior Epidemiologist
Andrew is Senior Epidemiologist in the Sexual Health and Blood Borne Virus Team at Health Protection Scotland and Honorary Senior Research Fellow within the School of Health & Life Sciences at Glasgow Caledonian University. He has worked in the NHS since 2001, specifically in the addictions research field since 2005 when he project managed the Lanarkshire Naloxone Pilot, one of the first its kind in the UK. He is a member of the independent National Forum on Drug-Related Deaths and the National Naloxone Advisory Group. He is also in the final stages of his part-time PhD, writing up a thesis titled, ‘Lived experiences of individuals prescribed naloxone for lay administration’. Past research projects have been supported financially by the Scottish Government and NHS Health Scotland.
Drug-related mortality (DRD) rates remain stubbornly high. In addition to attempts to increase engagement in treatment services and control the availability of illicit drugs, the use of naloxone for lay administration has increasingly been advocated as a key component in addressing the global DRD epidemic. Scotland has the highest DRD rate in the UK and is among the highest in Europe. In April 2011, Scotland became the first country in the world to implement a national naloxone programme (NNP), centrally coordinated and funded by the Scottish Government. This talk will briefly describe the origins of the NNP and its key components before laterally considering its practical, political and scientific impacts.
