Drug Abuse Prevention And Community Readiness

Introduces the concept of community readiness for substance abuse prevention programming. Defines community readiness, provides a rationale for assessing a community's readiness prior to the planning or implementation of prevention activities, identifies seven factors for assessing community readiness, and offers strategies for increasing readiness factors found to be deficient. Case study. Intended for use with the handbook "Drug Abuse Prevention: What Works" and "Drug Abuse Prevention and Community Readiness: Training Facilitator's Manual."

Contains a 9-hour, modular training curriculum, designed for use by training facilitators in introducing prevention practitioners and community members to the basic theory of drug abuse prevention and 3 prevention strategies. Provides the skills to assess and increase the readiness of a community to launch a prevention effort. Includes talking points for lectures, instructions for conducting discussions and exercises, and handouts. An overview of the program addresses the learning objectives, intended audience, methods for use, time and organization, class size, trainer qualifications, training aids, room and equip. requirements, and resources.

Provides practitioners with the info. to prepare their communities for prevention programming and to select and implement drug abuse prevention strategies that effectively address the needs of their local communities. The audience includes prevention program administrators, prevention specialists, community volunteers and activists, parents, teachers, counselors, and others who have an interest in drug abuse and its prevention. Contents: intro. to universal prevention; intro. to project STAR (a communitywide universal prevention program); key elements of project STAR; project STAR training require.; and implementation of project STAR.

Provides an overview of the theory and research on which community-based substance abuse prevention programs are based. Intended for use by prevention practitioners who vary in training and experience in the field but who are interested in developing prevention programs in their communities. Includes a definition of prevention, descriptions of substance abuse risk and protective factors and a discussion of the key features of three prevention strategies -- universal, selective, and indicated -- that have proven effective. Also explains how prevention efforts can be strengthened by using knowledge gained through research.