Interagency collaboration: Complex yet crucial

As welfare states expand and efficiency demands are intensified, interagency collaboration (IAC) has become essential for reducing public expenditure and for coordinating service delivery initiatives. IAC typically entails coordinated efforts between multiple governmental, non-governmental and private sector organisations to address complex societal challenges. They can also be more invasive, structural, cross-departmental public mergers, formations of central units and integrated services, such as in the case of the recent social- and healthcare reform in Finland.

The importance of IAC has been stressed especially for interventions targeting vulnerable populations and is seen as essential for delivering effective public services in areas that require multidisciplinary approaches, such as healthcare, social welfare, education and law enforcement. In the field of substance use and addiction-related issues Nordic IAC efforts that directly come to mind are for example Denmark's SSP model aimed at preventing substance use problems and juvenile delinquency (see Pedersen & Stothard, 2015) and the Swedish long-standing STAD effort (Stockholm Prevents Alcohol and Drug Problems), which aims to reduce alcohol and drug use through a partnership between healthcare services, the local government, the police and the hospitality industry. Norway has invested in its comprehensive KoRus system (Regional Centers for Drug and Alcohol Issues) that entails regional knowledge and resource centres that coordinate IAC between municipalities, healthcare providers and social services to address substance abuse and addiction issues. In Finland, the A-Clinic Foundation collaborates with various public sector agencies, including social services, healthcare and educational institutions, to combat substance use problems through a combination of treatment, prevention and rehabilitation programmes. Last, but not least, the Icelandic Model has received much international attention as a multi-agency approach to reducing substance abuse among teenagers, involving collaboration between schools, parents, local governments, social workers and researchers.

There is Nordic consensus regarding the necessity of such collaboration, but also an awareness of its complexity. Key challenges have concerned ensuring effective communication and coordination among agencies that have different mandates, cultures and operating procedures (Hellman, 2012). This can lead to inefficiencies or misaligned goals, particularly in areas where responsibility is shared between municipal, regional and national authorities. (e.g., Scott & Merton, 2021) Another problem has concerned data sharing between agencies, especially when dealing with sensitive personal information (e.g., health, criminal records in line with the General Data Protection Regulation). Another obvious issue pertains to resource allocation.

What is often neglected in research is the fact that all administrative and policy concepts entail programmatic beliefs. The complex interplay between language, institutions and social action is especially tricky in the field of substance use, gambling and addiction-related matters as their policies are often shared and merged with related fields, targeting a wide range of other types of entangled wicked problems, such as mental illness, crime prevention, youth work and education, homelessness, suicide prevention, occupational wellbeing or elderly care. This issue of NAD sheds light on some of these entanglements in the nature of problems and approaches to deal with the same.

In a much-needed, population-based, longitudinal survey, Oksanen et al. (2024) investigate the entanglements between the problematics of gambling and digital gaming. The study presents an understanding of how different forms of gambling are associated with a higher risk of at-risk gaming showing for example that online casino games are associated with the highest likelihood of at-risk gambling and gaming. Microtransactions within digital games increased at-risk gambling and gaming over time, but the amount of money spent on digital gaming was small compared to gambling. It seems that the lion's share of problems stems from electronic gambling machines and online gambling, which underpin other types of gaming habits, feeding each other in loops of game stimulus and habitual logics. Kraus et al. (2024) continue on the topic of gambling, comparing how key informants perceive voluntary self-exclusion (VSE) gambling programmes in seven jurisdictions. All participants considered the programmes insufficient and suggested potential improvements to increase utilisation and reduce gamblers’ breaching of VSE. Bujalski and Rowicka (2024) have explored the association between online alcohol purchasing and drinking behaviours during the late phase of the COVID-19 pandemic in Poland. A Swedish study (Feltmann et al., 2024) reports interviews with police officers, licensed premises owners, security staff and municipality officials in seven counties reporting frequent illicit drug use and dealing at licensed premises, causing a negative influence on the restaurant environment. The study highlights the importance of licensed premises getting more support in dealing with illicit drugs from relevant societal structures. Associations with parental substance use and neighbourhood sociodemographics are investigated in a Finnish study (Raitasalo et al., 2024) and Henrik Tham (2024) discusses how the Swedish police frames drugs as a problem.