Prevention Strategies

Evidence Based Prevention Strategies

1. Engaging students in community prevention efforts

Students may be encouraged to participate in a variety of community activities including anti-drug, anti-smoking etc.
Students may be encouraged to participate in campaigns/programs to provide more resources and justice to low income areas and communities of color.
Through service learning students may volunteer to work with community agencies and organizations engaged in a variety of activities including treatment and prevention of drugs etc.

Through participation in these kinds of activities, students will work to prevent problem behavior. In the process students may question and challenge their own at-risk behavior. They will align themselves with “pro-social” groups and individuals, associations that research indicates reduce the risk that individuals will engage in problem behavior.
READ MORE on connecting to the community.

2. Promoting pro-social norms
Teachers can provide positive role models and reinforce pro-social behavior (Biglan et. al., 2004). School administrators can provide clear and enforced policies that promote lower levels of problem behavior (e.g. bullying) by students.

Students may be encouraged to align with pro-social norms through participation in a variety of activities including school-based conflict resolution and peer medication
They may be encouraged to be involved in school-wide prevention campaigns targeting drugs, violence, bullying, social ostracism and other problem behavior.
In language arts and social science classes students may read, discuss, write about and role play pro-social alternatives to problem behavior .

Through these kinds of activities students may be troubled by the negative effects of problems like substance abuse, violence, bullying, social ostracism and at risk sexual activity on individuals and communities. They may empathize with those who suffer the consequences of these activities. READ MORE on promoting pro-social norms

3. Correcting misperceptions of norms
Research shows that students generally exaggerate the use of drugs by peers, and, in their drinking and drug using behavior conform to the overestimated levels (Perkins and Wechsler, 1996). Affected by the media, students also exaggerate the extent of violence in the society. Because behavior of young people is significantly affected by the desire to fit the expectations of their age group (Cosaro and Elder, 1990), research indicates that correcting the misperceived (exaggerated) norm reduces the problem behavior.

In math classes students can create graphs and tables comparing (mis)perceptions of norms to actual levels of at risk behavior; in social science classes they may examine and probe the harmful effects of the misperceptions.

4.Increasing perceptions of personal risk
Young people often believe that harm can only come to others. As they study the risks from use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, violence, or other at-risk behavior research indicates that students become more aware of their personal risk and many will begin to alter their behavior (Bachman, Johnston and O’Malley, 1998).

Effective use of this strategy involves linking personal risks with student aspirations. For example, student athletes could learn about the negative impact of smoking and drinking on athletic performance; students with aspirations to higher education could learn about the negative correlation between drinking and grades; or young women could learn about the increased risks of sexual assault if they are intoxicated or associating with intoxicated individuals.

5. Developing or enhancing life skills
Students who have weak decision making skills and have difficulty standing up to peers are more likely to engage in at risk behaviors.

In language arts and social science classes, students may be encouraged to develop social skills including interpersonal communication and refusal skills; this strategy includes role playing as students learn effective ways to respond to peers.
Students may also learn to disengage from and attempt to resolve conflict.
Students can be taught how to avoid situations involving high risk sexual behavior.
Students can learn methods to deflate, stand in opposition to, and seek support in the context of bullying and social ostracism.

Selecting an Appropriate Strategy for Your Students

While all five evidence based prevention strategies can be effectively adapted for use with all populations, classroom diversity should be taken into account in selecting strategies that may be especially appropriate. For example:

A class with high achieving students may respond especially well to the research based strategy of increasing perceptions of personal risk. These students need to be shown that behaviors like substance abuse put their future achievement in jeopardy.
If the students’ culture emphasizes the value of belonging to the group - to family and peers - an especially promising evidence-based strategy may be to engage groups of students in “pro-social” activity and align individual students with prosocial groups.
where the community has a strong history of engagement in social justice movements, teaching strategies that stress damage to the community - for example the oppressive effects of drugs and violence - and that attempt to engage students in community prevention may be especially effective. We recommend incorporating the State of Illinois Social and Emotional Learning Standards that overlap with the five prevention strategies. These include:
Assisting children to develop awareness and management of their emotions;
Setting and achieving important personal and academic goals; Using social awareness and interpersonal skills to establish and maintain positive relationships; and,
Demonstrating decision making and responsible behaviors to achieve school and life success.

Three Levels of Influence on Youth Behavior – a theoretical framework

These five prevention strategies respond to three levels of influence on problems of children and adolescents (Bronfenbrenner, 1979; Flay and Petraitis, 1994). The first level of influence is the wider Community. There are many ways in which the wider community helps produce the problem behavior of young people. For example:

Research (Currie, 1993) indicates that pressing problems in low income communities may include drug dealing, heavy use of illegal drugs, and gang violence and are largely responses to poverty - to the failure of society to provide sufficient legal opportunity for young people in these neighborhoods.
A community where there is heavy drinking by adults and parental tolerance of adolescent drinking provides examples and permission that will almost certainly result in high levels of binge drinking by high school students.
Communities where there is a very heavy focus on achievement, competitive success and status are likely to promote especially high levels of youth competition, cliques and social ostracism.

The second level of influence is Social Interaction with significant others including families and peers. Evidence based strategies 2 and 3, building pro-social norms and correcting misperceptions of norms respond to this level of influence. There are many examples of this level of influence.

A family where a parent has an alcohol or other drug problem is more likely to have children with substance abuse problems than a family without a parent who is abusing drugs.
Families that lack clear standards against drugs and violence will raise youngsters with more of these problems than families where standards are clear.
Perhaps the greatest single indicator of the likelihood that a youngster will engage in problem behavior is the behavior of the youngster’s peers. A strong protective factor against high risk behavior is close association with peers and significant adults, including teachers, who reflect “pro-social norms”, that is, they do not engage in and oppose such behavior.
Most young people want very much to fit in with the expectations of their peers. If they perceive widespread substance use, violence, bullying, cliquishness and high risk sexual behavior they are far more likely to engage in these practices than if they do not perceive such behavior as normative for their age.

The third level of influence is the Individual. Evidence based strategies 4 and 5, increasing perception of personal risk and enhancing life skills respond to this level of influence.

Students who crave approval, have difficulty and lack skills and practice in resisting peer pressure are more likely to be talked into engaging in problem behavior than students who have developed these social skills.
These students also have trouble making decisions and are more likely to decide to engage in problem behavior than students who have developed decision making skills.
Young people who see themselves as personally invulnerable to the negative effects of high risk behavior are more likely to experience the negative consequences of such behavior than students with a more accurate assessment of personal risks.

Building Civic Engagement and Self-Care Skills

Study of life issues such as immigration and the coronavirus provide the opportunity for teachers to encourage student civic engagement and self-care. Three of the evidence-based strategies we have discussed can be employed to develop civic engagement and self-care skills: 1) Promoting pro-social norms; 2) Increasing perceptions of personal risk, and, 3) Developing or enhancing life skills.

Promoting pro-social norms Teachers can build student understanding and concern for damage to the community caused by failure to follow public safety measures (vaccination, masks) to curtail the coronavirus. Teachers can encourage student understanding and concern for the problems faced by undocumented students and their families.
Increasing perceptions of personal risk Students can learn the risk to their health from failure to follow public health measures to prevent COVID.
Developing and enhancing life skills All students can learn to take care of themselves in relation to the coronavirus: avoiding high risk situations, being vaccinated, wearing masks. Undocumented students can learn what rights they and their families do have and learn to find and employ resources that provide support in their difficult circumstances.

Free 5 CPDU online workshop through Northeastern Illinois University’s College of Education

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