Current Prevention Theories and Practices By Sarah Barton, Sagamore Institute Faith in Communities, 2004 (Adapted from Community How To Guide On Prevention and Education, National Association of Governors’ Highway Safety Representatives, 2001.) In recent years, effective prevention practices have evolved from merely focusing on reaching individuals and providing knowledge about alcohol and drugs to more comprehensive approaches emphasizing programs and policies that also shape knowledge, beliefs and behavior by changing the target audience’s community, school, family and cultural environments. Experts have realized that effective prevention efforts should begin long before and continue throughout the high school years. Two effective and widely used approaches to prevention are the Risk and Protective Factors Model and the Public Health Model. The Risk and Protective Factors approach to prevention recognizes that certain aspects of an individual’s lifestyle or environment could predispose that individual to underage drinking and drug use while other factors “protect” the individual. Research indicates that strengthening families, improving parenting skills, and helping families to establish strong, consistent norms about alcohol and drug use can help to prevent substance abuse. Based upon these findings, many effective prevention programs are designed to offset risk factors and strengthen protective factors and may never mention “alcohol,” “drugs,” or “substance abuse.” An example of a program that emphasizes strengthening protective factors is described in the section of this toolkit entitled Description of Creating Lasting Family Connections Program . The Public Health Model classifies programs based on the “agent-host-environment” model of classification. The agent is the substance itself (alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs). The host is a person, or the knowledge, attitudes, biological, physical, and psychological factors that influence drug-using behaviors. The environment is the setting in which alcohol and other drug use occurs, including community attitudes and norms that help to shape behavior. For many years, underage drinking prevention programs tended to focus on just two of the three major elements of the public health model: the agent (alcohol or drugs) or the host (the young person). Recently, the public health model has shifted the focus to how the agent and the host interact with the third element in the model – the environment. A public health approach to prevention requires not only an understanding of how the three factors of host, agent, and environment interact, but also include a plan of action for influencing all three. |
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