[Who are the drug users in precarious situation in the canton of Vaud ?].

With a long experience in evaluating public health measures in the fields of HIV and drug addiction at national level, the Evaluation and Expertise in Public Health sector (CEESAN, Unisanté, Switzerland) has also been monitoring the situation in the canton of Vaud for more than twenty years. In this article, we present two instruments developed for epidemiological monitoring purposes : the « Pointage annuel du profil des usager·ère·s des structures à bas-seuil d'accès » (PAPU, annual measure of users of low-threshold facilities' profile) and the online platform for opioid agonist treatments. The data collected through these two instruments provide information on the main characteristics of precarious drug users in the canton and help to guide public policy in this field.

Older persons' experiences and perspectives of receiving social care: a systematic review of the qualitative literature.

The topic of social care for older people has gained increasing attention from the part of academics, professionals, policy makers and media. However, we know little about this topic from the perspectives of older persons, which hinders future developments in terms of theory, empirical research, professional practice and social policy. This article presents and discusses a systematic review of relevant qualitative research-based evidence on the older persons' experiences and perspectives of receiving social care published between 1990 and September 2014.

The role of pharmacies in the care of drug users: what has changed in ten years. The case of a Swiss region.

This article assesses changes over 10 years in the role of pharmacies in the care of drug misusers--needle/syringe provision and methadone treatment supervision--in the Swiss French-speaking Canton of Vaud (636,000 inhabitants, 238 pharmacies). A review of data collected in four surveys (1991, 1994, 1996, 2003) on the provision of sterile material (and methadone treatment supervision in 2003) including all the pharmacists of the Canton of Vaud was conducted, as well as a review of data of the monitoring of needle exchange programmes introduced since 1996 in this canton, and of methadone treatment statistics. In 2003, interviews with pharmacists complemented the survey.