Some prevention interventions are designed to help individuals develop the intentions and skills to act in a healthy manner. Others focus on creating environments that support healthy behavior. Research indicates that the most effective prevention interventions incorporate both approaches. Targeted prevention identifies and reaches out to populations that are at a higher risk for substance misuse.

Environmental Strategies

Environmental strategies take a broader approach than individual-level strategies. Prevention professionals use environmental strategies to change the conditions within a community, including physical, social, or cultural factors that may lead to substance use. For example, prevention planners may decide to target laws or norms that are favorable towards alcohol misuse or illegal substance use. Environmental strategies are most effective when implemented as part of a comprehensive approach.

Environmental strategies include communication and education strategies, which seek to influence community norms by raising awareness and creating community support for prevention. Environmental strategies may also use enforcement methods to deter people and organizations from illegal substance use.

Communication and Education

Messages communicated through the media influence how the public thinks and behaves. Communications strategies—public education, social marketing, media advocacy, and media literacy—can be used to influence community norms, increase public awareness, and attract community support for a variety of prevention issues.

• Public education is designed to increase the public’s knowledge and awareness of a particular health issue. Public education campaigns may combine public service announcements (PSAs) on television, radio, or online with billboards and posters. Familiar public education slogans include “Friends don’t let friends drive drunk” and “A mind is a terrible thing to waste.”
• Social marketing involves using advertising principles to change social norms and promote healthy behaviors. Like public education, social marketing uses multiple media channels to message targeted groups of individuals. However, social marketing campaigns do more than provide information. They try to persuade people to adopt a new behavior by showing them the benefit they’ll gain by doing so.
• Media advocacy attempts to shape the way social issues are discussed in the media. The goal is to build support for changes in public policy. By working directly with outlets to change both the amount of coverage the media provides and the content of that coverage, media advocates hope to influence the way people talk and think about a social or public policy.
• Media literacy teaches young people critical-viewing skills. This approach seeks to help children and teenagers analyze, understand, and evaluate the media messages they encounter.  1