Our environmental youth substance abuse prevention strategies seek to identify and reduce the conditions in a community that increase the risk of youth substance abuse and we help identify and promote those conditions that reduce the risk of abuse.
How healthy is your community environment?
Neighborhood conditions affect all of us. We focus on prevention strategies to change the conditions in communities that increase the risk of youth substance abuse.
Our Approach
We approach these issues as public health problems and identify things in the larger community environment that increase the risk of youth substance abuse instead of focusing efforts on individuals. If we are to succeed in this effort, we have to focus on confronting conditions that increase youth substance abuse.
We look beyond the individual to the group, community, and culture for factors that affect youth substance abuse. Community beliefs and attitudes may result in individual or group behavior that can either increase or reduce the risk of youth substance abuse. These beliefs are reflected in conditions that affect the use of substances. For example, stores in a community that are selling alcohol to minors or older youth introducing those younger to substances are some of the conditions we strive to address to prevent and reduce youth substance use.
For more information about environmental substance abuse prevention strategies from a coalition perspective, please review PDF The Coalition Impact: Environmental Prevention Strategies by CADCA.
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