Drug Abuse Prevention

Workplace Interventions for Drug Abuse, an annotated bibliography of fifty entries prepared for DEPR, was compiled by Paul D. Steele, Ph.D., Institute for Social Research at the University of New Mexico. This document includes peer-reviewed journal articles and relevant mongraph articles covering employee assistance programs, prevention programs, and drug and alcohol testing programs.

A literature review, Preventive Intervention Cost-Effectiveness and Cost Benefit, was prepared by Lisa Werthamer, M.S.W., Sc.D., and Pinka Chatterji, M.A., to enhance the capacity of drug prevention initiatives to respond to questions about costs and benefits and to justify for policymakers that the benefits are worth the costs.

Linkages Between Substance Abuse Prevention and Other Human Services, a literature review prepared by Gale A. Held, M.P.A., explores an emerging field of literature. The majority of substance abuse prevention programs are set in schools, although similar efforts are beginning to take place in other human service fields. The paper discusses emerging prevention models and approaches.  Conclusions and implications for future research include implementation of methodologically sound evaluations and effective cost-benefit and cost-effective studies of prevention programs.

On September 11, 1998, the Division of Epidemiology and Prevention Research convened the meeting, Drug Abuse Prevention Through Family-Focused Health Care Services, chaired by Elizabeth Robertson, Ph.D. The goals of the meeting were to identify existing examples of the integration of research-based family substance abuse prevention interventions in health care and social service programming; to discuss ways to encourage service providers to integrate prevention intervention programs, program components, and knowledge into their offerings; and to explore types of research that would facilitate the integration of prevention interventions into service settings. During the meeting, the participants discussed the impact of health care services as well as better ways to use existing services delivery systems such as schools, Cooperative Extension Service, and social welfare agencies for delivery of prevention services. A five-phase framework was suggested to help define a research agenda and to study prevention practices. At the conclusion of the meeting, participants agreed that there are delivery systems that offer potential pathways to expand family-focused prevention services. The service delivery approach offers researchers an opportunity to examine programming results, effectiveness, outcomes, and costs of prevention interventions.