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RESEARCH NEWS

Volume 1, Number 19  --  March 27, 1998

Prevention Works!

Prevention Guidelines: Final Steps Toward Successful Implementation

The final steps in developing successful prevention efforts involve implementation considerations. As described in Guidelines and Benchmarks for Prevention Programming, the prevention community can maximize program planning to ensure success and enhance prevention activities by following key guidelines. This is the third and final alert in a series focusing on prevention planning and programming guidelines.

• Timing is a critical element in successful program implementation.

Because local and even national events may affect a target group’s readiness for prevention messages, selecting an opportune time--a teachable moment--for program implementation is essential.

For example, one community might create a ceremony where new drivers receive their license along with information about safe driving. In this way, a common rite of passage becomes a meaningful time to communicate essential information to an interested young audience. Dramatic events, such as a substance abuse-related tragedy, can bring attention to a prevention issue and galvanize a community to take action.

• Prevention efforts should be designed with sufficient intensity and duration to be effective.

Unlike the field of public health, where a one-time intervention (e.g., inoculation) will prevent terrible consequences such as smallpox and polio, substance abuse problems do not yield to simple prevention strategies. Prevention efforts need to match the intensity of the problem and provide continuous focus on the solution to be successful. If necessary, "booster" interventions that reinforce the efforts are included.

• Ensure quality of delivery in prevention efforts.

Successful planners define key features of prevention efforts in advance and then systematically monitor them to ensure that they are working. Implementing such high-quality delivery requires a well-qualified staff to concentrate on program organization, public relations, recordkeeping, accounting, and other factors that increase the measurable success of prevention efforts. Because activities may change as new conditions and opportunities arise, any changes to the original effort can be carefully documented to enhance program evaluation, even providing a model program for others to emulate.

• Prevention efforts should be continually evaluated.

Prevention programs should be planned with evaluation measures in mind. Throughout the planning and implementation phases, open communication between members of the prevention staff provides evaluators with information to highlight outcome measures and anticipate any program shortfalls, enhancing the overall effort.

These guidelines, which reflect the best knowledge of promising prevention efforts, afford the prevention community a framework for developing successful programs. By incorporating idea development, structure, and implementation considerations into the design of prevention activities, planners increase the potential for program success.

Source: Adapted by CSAP from Guidelines and Benchmarks for Prevention Programming (1997). 57 pp. SMA 95-3033.

To receive a complimentary copy of this PreventionAlert, call SAMSHA's National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information (NCADI) @ 1-800-729-6686, TDD 1-800-487-4889 (for the hearing impaired.) PREVENTIONAlert is supported by the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, and may be copied without permission with appropriate citation. For information about PREVENTIONAlert, please contact CSAP by phone (301) 443-0581 or e-mail gensley@samhsa.gov