About Paolo Pertica Award

It is with deep sorrow that we heard of the passing of our colleague and friend Paolo Pertica in October 2019, following a long struggle with mental ill-health. He will be missed by all those who knew him.

In 2004 in recognition of the contribution Paolo had made in his work helping drug users caught up in the criminal justice system, both in the UK and more widely in Europe, this award was established in his name.

He was instrumental in developing the European Network of Drugs and Infections Prevention in Prisons (ENDIPP) and the award was initially made to mark the 10-year anniversary of the network. In addition to ENDIPP, the award has also previously been managed by the International Harm Reduction Association (IHRA) and knowledge Action Change (KAC). The Global Public Health Network (GPHN) is now the custodian of the award.

The award is made to someone who, like Paolo, has undertaken work that has contributed significantly to the improvement of knowledge about and assistance for drug users, especially those who are incarcerated.

In memory of Paolo, here he is in 2012 presenting the award at the first CHI conference  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u-eyxkgy0xo.

Paolo’s family are happy that the award should continue on an annual basis and it is our intention to make the award annually, at the City Health conference.

The aim of the award is to recognise innovation and outstanding contributions to public health interventions within the criminal justice context, in relation to drug and alcohol users, which can be shown to have a positive impact for both individual offenders and the community in general.

The award is open to individuals and organisations throughout the world engaged in work directly with offenders (including advocacy) policy development work, training, or research. The context for the activity might be related to community settings (including work with police, courts and probation services) or within prisons and other places of incarceration.
Specifically the award panel will consider:

• The level of innovation in the work/training/research
• the extent of the evidence base for the work/training/research
• the public health impact of the work/training/research
• the scope for knowledge transfer to other locations