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Prevention of Alcohol Problems in the 21st Century: Challenges and Opportunities
Author(s) -
Holder Harold D.
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
the american journal on addictions
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.997
H-Index - 76
eISSN - 1521-0391
pISSN - 1055-0496
DOI - 10.1080/105504901750160402
Subject(s) - context (archaeology) , psychological intervention , public health , frontier , substance abuse prevention , public policy , public relations , political science , risk analysis (engineering) , business , environmental health , medicine , substance abuse , economic growth , economics , geography , psychiatry , nursing , archaeology , law
The community is the “new frontier” for alcohol and other drug prevention. New prevention initiatives at the community level suggest that effective strategies will often be quite different from national or state policies and will require a different perspective. Alcohol and other drug use is part of routine community life and must be considered in the context of the community, which is itself a dynamic and self‐adapting system. To develop effective community‐level interventions, prevention planners and policy makers must understand how various aspects of the community influence alcohol and other drug use and even contribute to alcohol and other drug problems. This paper outlines the basis for a systems approach to community prevention and the policy options that this approach suggests. It also examines the new science of complexity, differentiates between catchment and a systems approach to prevention, describes a public health model within a systems approach, and describes using local policy as a means to produce system changes as well as recent findings from community‐based prevention efforts that employed local alcohol policies.