Chapter 1: Introduction and Overview
Background: Substance Abuse Prevention Programs Targeting High Risk Youth
Substance use is one of today’s most challenging health and social problems. Further, it is more pervasive in the United States than in any other industrialized nation. Early involvement with any drug is a risk factor for later drug use and criminal activity, and the more severe the early involvement, the greater the risk that antisocial behavior will emerge in the future. Early use of alcohol, tobacco, or illicit drugs has been linked clearly to later substance abuse (Kandel, 1980, 1982; DuPont, 1989; cf. Catalano, Kosterman, Hawkins, Newcomb, & Abbott, 1996). Thus, young people, a particularly vulnerable at-risk population, are a key target for prevention efforts.
It is because of their perceived vulnerability and malleability that youth have been the focus of most substance use prevention and intervention programs. In fact, focusing on young people from early childhood through adolescence has long been recognized as central to an effective substance abuse prevention strategy. Ever since the first major outbreak of substance use among youth in the 1960s, prevention programs directed at children and youth (and their families and schools) have been key elements in broader primary prevention efforts at Federal, State, and local levels. Youth-oriented prevention programs and initiatives have proliferated throughout the country, and several generations of programs, models, and theoretical frameworks for prevention have evolved.
The Center for Substance Abuse Prevention’s Role
Since its establishment in 1986, the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP, originally the Office for Substance Abuse Prevention, or OSAP) has played a critical leadership role in the development of substance abuse prevention theory, programming, and research. An important part of CSAP’s mission within the broader context of its parent agency, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), is to generate new knowledge about the impact and effectiveness of prevention efforts. Much of the information driving this knowledge development effort has been accumulated over the past 11 years in the form of data collection, analysis, and reports of findings from CSAP’s diverse array of demonstration grant programs.
Among the first of these programmatic efforts was the High Risk Youth (HRY) Demonstration Grant Program, which awarded grants to community-based organizations, universities, and local agencies. Similarly, the venue of these programs has varied in terms of population density, geographic location, and point of contact with participants. Further, these programs have attempted to assist parents and their preschool children, preadolescents, adolescents, and communities as a whole, providing them with the skills, knowledge, and support to resist or desist from substance use. Special initiatives have focused on violence prevention, HIV/AIDS prevention, the needs of adolescent females, the disabled, and specific ethnic/cultural groups.
In the past 11 years, CSAP has amassed information about these programs’ processes and outcomes. The agency has undertaken an effort to formalize, synthesize, and extract lessons, based on hard scientific evidence regarding the ability of intervention programs to successfully effect decreased substance use among target populations. The information extracted from the grants has been formalized in the High Risk Populations DataBank. The purpose of this document is to present the theoretical framework for CSAP’s HRY programs, as well as the findings from selected effective programs.
Previous | Table of Contents | Next
Last Updated: March 4, 2002
