UnityNoijen, J. (2005)
Handboek Unity: Opzetten en uitvoeren van peer-educatie in het uitgaanscircuit.
' Jellinek. Amsterdam: Rozenberg Publishers. is peer education project started in 1996 by Jaap Jamin at the large Amsterdam-based

addiction Addiction is a neuropsychological disorder characterized by a persistent and intense urge to engage in certain behaviors, one of which is the usage of a drug, despite substantial harm and other negative consequences. Repetitive drug use oft ...

prevention Prevention may refer to: Health and medicine * Preventive healthcare, measures to prevent diseases or injuries rather than curing them or treating their symptoms General safety * Crime prevention, the attempt to reduce deter crime and crimi ...

and treatment organisation Jellinek. It has steadily grown to become the

Netherlands ) , anthem = ( en, "William of Nassau") , image_map = , map_caption = , subdivision_type = Sovereign state , subdivision_name = Kingdom of the Netherlands , established_title = Before independence , established_date = Spanish Netherl ...

' largest nightlife peer education initiative, and has similarities with initiatives such as DanceSafe in the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., federal district, five ma ...

Background

In the Netherlands in the early nineties, the underground dance scene became more mainstream. The observed high prevalence of substances in nightlife settings prompted the development of a new

health promotion Health promotion is, as stated in the 1986 World Health Organization (WHO) Ottawa Charter for Health Promotion, the "process of enabling people to increase control over, and to improve their health." Scope The WHO's 1986 Ottawa Charter for Hea ...

initiative: the Unity peer education project. Although initially funded as a

European Union The European Union (EU) is a supranational political and economic union of member states that are located primarily in Europe. The union has a total area of and an estimated total population of about 447million. The EU has often been ...

project, as a

best practice A best practice is a method or technique that has been generally accepted as superior to other known alternatives because it often produces results that are superior to those achieved by other means or because it has become a standard way of doing ...

Unity quickly became a structural part of its mother organisation, Jellinek Prevention. In 2005 and 2006, a manual was published and promoted Noijen, J., van Bakkum, F., Jamin, J., Visser & Schippers, G. (2006) Verslaving 2(3), pp 89–93. to encourage wider adoption of this technique.

Quality label

Although initially conceived as an intervention largely shaped by the peer educators, over the years principles from systematic intervention development, specifically the

Intervention Mapping Intervention mappingBartholomew Eldridge, L. K., Markham, C. M., Ruiter, R. A. C., Fernàndez, M. E., Kok, G., & Parcel, G. S., 2016. ''Planning health promotion programs; an Intervention Mapping approach'', 4th Ed. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass. ...

protocol, were implemented to ensure that Unity was theory- and evidence based. In 2011, Unity requested and was granted the quality label "well developed" by the

Dutch Dutch commonly refers to: * Something of, from, or related to the Netherlands * Dutch people () * Dutch language () Dutch may also refer to: Places * Dutch, West Virginia, a community in the United States * Pennsylvania Dutch Country People E ...

watchdog organisation Centrum Gezond Leven.

International health promotion

As the nightlife crowd in Amsterdam became more and more international, Unity has produced a number of international ealth promotion interventions Most of these targeted mainly knowledge and awareness, such as a movie explaining Dutch drug policy to tourists. These have generally been well received.

References

Education in Amsterdam {{Netherlands-school-stub