About Prevention -
Prevention is a theoretical framework, constantly being tested by research, to intervene early in the lives of children and youth to stop negative behavior before it starts. In an outcome driven world, it is difficult to measure prevention, because it measures that which does not occur.
Today we know much about what works in prevention. We know that there are a number of risk factors, such as attitudes that are favorable to negative behavior, lack of commitment to school, family conflict and peer participation in negative behavior. These risk factors cross the domains in which children and youth live: community, school, family, individual. The more of these risk factors a child accumulates, the greater the chance that the child will engage in negative behaviors.
Conversely, we know that there also are protective factors, such as clear community norms of positive behavior, bonding to schools, healthy families and resilience. The more of these protective factors a child accumulates, the greater the chance that the child will engage in positive behaviors.
We also know that the same risk and protective factors influence a variety of behaviors including: substance abuse, violence, school behavior, teen pregnancy, delinquency, gang involvement, etc. The good news is that efforts targeted toward preventing one type of negative behavior also prevent other types of negative behavior.
Further, research over the past decade has provided clear evidence on interventions that work to prevent such negative behaviors. Targeting prevention programming to these proven strategies results in socially and economically cost effective reductions in negative behaviors.
It follows that good prevention practice requires:
- bringing together the key leaders in a community, including a diverse planning team representing all disciplines;
- developing a shared vision for what the community should look like;
- using data to identify the risk and protective factors in the community;
- identifying the community’s existing assets and gaps in services;
- using evidence-based strategies to meet the identified needs; and
- ongoing evaluation of strategies and community needs.
Download "Our Common Language: A Quick Guide To Prevention Terminology in Virginia " in PDF format (You must have the Adobe PDF Reader in order to view this document).
It’s never too early to start protecting Virginia’s children!
When most of us think about young people who use drugs, alcohol or tobacco, we tend to think first about teenagers because of the increased exposure they get to these substances with greater social independence and the increasing number of peer activities they enjoy outside of the home, both inside and outside of school. Somehow, we tend to think of younger children and toddlers as being insulated and relatively immune from the pernicious influences of these substances, especially if they happen to live in homes where substance use and abuse is not prevalent or evident. More and more, however, research is demonstrating the fallacy of this assumption. In our media-saturated society, ever more and ever younger kids are being indirectly exposed to the realities of substance use and abuse. Research has shown that environmental strategies – community norms, shared values and public messages that promote healthy, drug-free living -- make a substantial difference in keeping all residents, including our youngest children, better protected from the negative influences of illegal drugs, alcohol and tobacco use. Some very successful and nationally recognized model programs for substance abuse prevention target younger children in the elementary school grade levels because such programs have been proven to work. It seems that building youth resiliency and increasing their ability to resist the temptation for experimentation with, or use of, these substances cannot happen too early. Why?
Using the most often cited national statistics (2002, National Survey of Drug Use and Health), Virginia ranks in the top one-third of all states in the overall effectiveness of its statewide substance abuse prevention programs, as measured by the frequency and extent of youth substance use and abuse. However, the initial age of experimentation or onset of alcohol and marijuana use among its youth population between the ages of 12 and 17 years old generally occurs earlier than the comparable national average for these substances. In Virginia, the average age for first-time use of marijuana is 13.7 years, of alcohol consumption is 12.6, and of tobacco products is 12.1. Nationally, the corresponding respective ages for first-time use are 17.1, 16.2 and 16.0 years of age. In a recent youth survey, 18 percent of Virginia’s eighth-graders reported using alcohol in the last 30 days, while the corresponding national percentage was 22 percent. Smoking cigarettes in the last 30 days were 12 percent of eighth-graders in Virginia, compared to 15.2 percent of their (12-17 year-old) peers nationwide, while another six percent of eighth-grade Virginians reported using marijuana in the past 30 days as compared to 8.2 percent of their 12-17 year-old peer users nationally. In Virginia during this time, 28 percent of the surveyed youth said it was “very easy” to get alcohol; 46 percent said it was very easy to obtain cigarettes. Among the other substances being used and abused by Virginia youth who participated in the survey were smokeless tobacco, LSD or other psychedelic drugs, powdered or crack cocaine, sniffed glue, methamphetamine, and other drugs.