|
Ms. Rea, you have an impressive range of experience in your career as a substance abuse professional, including work advocating for and implementing environmental strategies. You have recently become the new president of the Maryland Association of Prevention Professionals and Advocates (MAPPA), you were a founding board member of the Maryland Underage Drinking Prevention Coalition, and you are currently the Health and Substance Abuse Manager for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments.
First, let’s talk about MAPPA and your role with this organization. Before being elected president, you also contributed to MAPPA as a secretary. How did you initially find MAPPA or how did the organization find you?
At the time MAPPA was founded, I was working with Martha Rosacker, who was the founding president. I was recruited to be one of the first members, and I chose to join the Advocacy Committee. That was my first role in MAPPA.
When was MAPPA founded?
MAPPA was founded in 1998. The people who founded it were primarily prevention coordinators from some of the Maryland counties, as well as people who worked with them in some capacity.
What was the inspiration to create the organization?
I believe they felt a statewide network was needed, particularly for some of the smaller counties. We had prevention people who only had a limited number of colleagues with whom they could brainstorm, and so forth. Also, because many of the founders worked for the government, they could not do much advocacy as part of their job. They needed some organization that could speak up for prevention. Not necessarily to do the lobbying, but just to educate the policy makers about prevention and what an effective strategy it is.
Has MAPPA served its purpose to support prevention professionals in this way, by providing a network and venue for advocacy?
I think it has. I think that definitely MAPPA has. Its members have been able to influence policy development by educating some of the policy makers, talking to people in MAPPA and at local offices, and by serving on statewide committees. It is easy for a state committee (an agency, the legislator, or the Governor’s office) to ask for representatives from MAPPA for prevention coverage. Previously, they would have had to ask for somebody from ADADA, and that is another state agency. What they wanted was somebody out in the front line. MAPPA has become that organization.
MAPPA’s vision “is to unite and empower leaders in ATOD Prevention for a healthy and resilient Maryland in which there is no misuse or abuse of alcohol or prescription drugs and no use of illicit drugs. How successful has MAPPA been in supporting its leaders in the field of prevention to accomplish these goals?
I think it has been useful to be able to produce some materials that have statewide support. It hasn’t completely turned the world upside down, so that there is no misuse or abuse of alcohol or prescription drugs. However, it has provided some opportunities to reach out to people who individual members would not have been able to reach out to previously.
What kind of changes within the organization might help it to better achieve its goals?
I think as MAPPA becomes more well known, as its membership grows, and as its membership base broadens beyond the ADADA funding stream, that we’re starting to have more members from private industry or nonprofit organizations. As we get more allied professionals and people from the research field to join it, those things will help change it.
MAPPA’s mission “is to establish and maintain a support system for prevention professionals and to promote public recognition of prevention as a viable, distinct professional discipline.” Do you feel that MAPPA has been successful in carrying out its mission?
I think that what MAPPA is doing is pulling the profession together so that people don’t feel isolated. You feel like there is someone you can turn to who will help you develop a program, a training session, etc. MAPPA has created a couple curricula that are available for training purposes and publicized some of it. We’ve also been able to bring in some people who maybe don’t realize that they are doing prevention but really are, or educating people who thought they were doing prevention but really weren’t. I think those are important things, but we still need to be doing a lot more work in this area.
You’ve addressed this some already, but are there any other ways that you would like to see MAPPA develop further?
I think I’d like to see much more publicity about what is going on in the program. In particular, we need to encourage the dissemination of statistics about substance abuse and changes that happen as a result of a successful strategy. Right now, a lot of the research is focused on fairly small programs-30 kids here, 10 kids there. I think other types of prevention need to be publicized more, such as tax increases, real policy environmental strategies, and changing community norms.
Do you feel that MAPPA can serve as a model prevention organization for other states?
Yes, I do. In fact, it already has provided Virginia with the opportunity to use at least one product from MAPPA, which is a paper that the Advocacy Committee wrote called What is Prevention? It’s a very short, plainly written description of what prevention is all about. A lot of work went into it, and it pulled from many sources. The paper puts prevention in everyday language that policy makers and ordinary people can understand.
What training has MAPPA identified for prevention professionals and advocates?
We did a survey this year, and our members told us that they would really like to see coursework that would lead to certification. People are a little unsure as to how to go through the certification process and which classes they need to take. Therefore, several people asked for a class that would prepare them for certification, the examination, and also help them get their documentation in order. Then, there is an ongoing need for training about the emerging research findings and constantly keeping people up to date on new science. We also need to bring in allied workers who are trying to do prevention but don’t have prevention training to give them basic prevention training-how to work with prevention professionals, when needed, or how to implement prevention when they’re trying to do it on their own.
How can access to prevention training opportunities be increased?
I think we need to have much better publicity about the training that is already being offered. I often run across something of interest that is next week, and my calendar is already filled up. If we knew about it 2 or 3 months ahead of time, we could get it on our calendar and that would increase attendance and opportunities. We also need to share opportunities for advanced training because many jurisdictions don’t have enough advance prevention people to fill a class. By better publicizing upcoming events and coursework, we can pull from several jurisdictions and end up with a better class size. I would also like to encourage colleges and universities to offer prevention courses.
What do you feel is the best way to increase networking opportunities for prevention professionals and advocates?
I think having conferences where people actually can sit around a table and discuss where they are going, not just coursework conferences but “conferring” conferences. We need to do cross-training with other disciplines so that we understand what the police or the juvenile justice people are doing, and they understand what we are doing. We can then work together better. In addition, we need to be sure that prevention people are represented at workgroups around youth issues, which could lead to an increase in the use of our literature.
Would you like to elaborate a little more on the approaches to advocacy that MAPPA takes?
MAPPA has created several position papers and will continue to revise those and add other position papers as needed-things like medical marijuana, underage drinking-for all the issues that deal with substance abuse prevention and other kinds of prevention as well. We’ve created the paper What is Prevention? We have done a fair amount of not lobbying, but educating legislators about the issue. I don’t think MAPPA has ever taken a position on a bill by number, and we have had some successes. I think we all felt good about getting some of the drinking and driving legislation passed because some people in MAPPA were involved in that. I also believe that even though MAPPA is a state organization, it has a very strong role in local advocacy because the local people can quote the MAPPA position papers as being the state prevention authority organization, which carries more weight than an individual’s opinion. If they cite MAPPA as their resource, people listen to them a little more and are more likely to quote it because it is in writing and citable.
When did MAPPA gain this kind of authority in prevention?
I think the What is Prevention? paper is the one that has really made the most impact, which was a little surprising to us. However, a couple of counties have used it in studies about what they are doing in prevention.
Would you like to highlight any policies that the organization endorses?
Yes. For example, MAPPA endorses server training for alcohol servers. They also do not endorse medical marijuana, which they think continues to be illegal.
In your professional life, including your various roles in prevention, you have gleaned valuable experience collaborating with and helping to coordinate a diversity of groups and individuals. For example, you have worked with local, state, regional, and national government agencies and officials, schools, villages, organizations, parents, students, and businesses. From all of your experiences in working with others, what advice can you give to prevention professionals in their efforts to collaborate and coordinate projects?
I think the most important part is involving as many different viewpoints as possible. You come up with a much better product if you have a lot of different kinds of people involved and that means from different professions, different socioeconomic backgrounds, different races and ethnicities, and even different thinking styles. All of those things are valuable resources, but you have to control those resources. The best way to do that is by using scientific methods where you really define a problem together. Next, you define what you want to have happen to that problem. What is the change that you’re seeking? Then, you look for what activities are likely to cause that change based on the best research we have available. Often, there isn’t enough research, so you have to turn it into kind of a mini-research project. Even if you do have a lot of research, you still have to use evaluations-it is bringing all those people together in a structure. If you don’t have the people, the structure doesn’t do you any good; having all the people is unmanageable unless you have a structure. Therefore, following problem definition, theory, solution definition, and then testing of your theory, going back to constantly re-evaluate and re-plan is what really works.
You’ve also been involved in policy analysis and advocacy for public programs, an important environmental strategy for the prevention of substance abuse. You have advised government administrators and elected officials on policy programs, staffing, safety planning, and budget design. You’ve organized conferences, workshops, media events, and rallies to involve the community and elected officials. You’ve spoken to local, regional, and national groups and appeared on radio and television. As an advocate, you’ve also formulated coalition positions; worked with elected officials; and written letters, fax sheets, articles, and testimonies to inform, influence, and persuade voters and elected officials. With such extensive experience in policy analysis and advocacy, what suggestions can you give to prevention professionals adopting a policy advocacy tactic and achieving their prevention goals?
I think policy advocacy has three important pieces: (1) you have to have your facts in order-the numbers of whatever, the research about whatever, and very hard, cold facts, but all by themselves the facts; (2) you’ve got to put a face on it, so you need to find the people that are affected by it, who might be the victims or the beneficiaries of whatever it is that you’re looking for; and (3) you also have to use connections-people who know people-and you have to be willing to do one-on-one conversations. In person is best; by phone is second best. Letters are better than mass mailing, and individually written letters are better than mass mailings or emails. It really takes coordination across all of those things. You have to have a person who can relate a true story: “This is my daughter. Isn’t she beautiful? She was killed by a drunk driver.” That is what made MADD successful-putting faces to the facts. It was also that you have a number of people who are harmed by something or a number of people who benefit by something. It is knowing your politicians, knowing your policy makers, or finding somebody who does. Those things are all vital.
You’ve also had experience in founding organizations. For example, you were a founding board member of the Maryland Underage Drinking Prevention Coalition. What was the motivation to found this organization?
We founded that organization because we were very concerned about underage drinking in the state. Montgomery County had started addressing it, but the rest of the state had not. The Governor’s office was very interested in getting some legislation passed and some programs in place in other jurisdictions, so we pulled together the Maryland Underage Drinking Coalition.
What were some of the challenges and accomplishments faced by this organization?
Legislation is always a challenge, but we did accomplish some very important law changes. We got keg registration, and we tightened up the fake ID laws. Those were both things that we could measure results almost immediately. Keg parties almost disappeared as a result of key registration. With fake IDs, there were loopholes in the law that made it almost impossible to do anything about them. Now, we have more fake ID laws, and the police can actually use them. We had some problems; the challenge was always finding the funding. That was what eventually killed the organization-lack of funding. We also had some internal disagreements on approach: How much should we involve the alcohol industry as a funding source or as a cooperative entity? Should we work on harm reduction as opposed to prohibiting underage drinking completely? I think those issues, though, were tiny compared to the lack of funding.
You’re also a member of the Society for Prevention Research. What are the goals of this organization?
The Society for Prevention Research is set up to disseminate research on prevention in a variety of areas-teen pregnancy, nutrition problems, substance abuse, violence, and so forth. It is really a very interesting organization, primarily researchers. They do have some practitioners who are members. They have a wonderful conference every year, which is a week-long conference with papers being presented that are on state-of-the-art prevention. Then they have a journal that comes out, I think, four times a year. It also has excellent research on prevention that is peer reviewed. They have a nice career support group, which is unique, with researchers whose work you’ve been reading about-researchers like Hawkins, Catalono, Wexler, and other people who are experts in their field. You can hear them actually present their work and ask them questions.
Are there any barriers that this organization faces?
Well, it is pretty expensive to join for most prevention people. I think it is more than $50 a year to join, and a lot of prevention people can’t afford that.
Currently, you are the Health and Substance Abuse Manager for the Washington Metropolitan Council of Government. How does this role fit in the continuity of your career as a substance abuse professional?
It’s an interesting change moving from working strictly with substance abuse to working with broader health issues and making substance abuse part of the larger health picture. Right now, I’m doing a lot of work on Homeland Security, and substance abuse is part of that. People turn to alcohol and drugs after a tragedy, and we need to be prepared for that. We want to try to prevent the need for people to look for that type of coping mechanism, so it’s a real challenge. It is also a challenge because the metropolitan area crosses three major jurisdictions-Northern Virginia, District of Columbia, and Suburban Maryland. So, we are dealing with different laws and different political systems, which is very interesting, too. I’ve never worked across that much variety. Also, of course, we are dealing with 18 jurisdictions that are member organizations, with their own rules and regulations, as well as the state-level groups. Eighteen jurisdictions and three state equivalent makes for challenging work because we’re working in the political world, and we have elected officials and laws. Everything has to be done by consensus, which pulls heavily on my collaboration background.
So, it seems that your background in collaboration is one thing that you’re able to contribute to this new role?
Yes, and also my experience working with politicians has been useful. In Montgomery County, the project I worked on was started by a county council member. Then, when I worked for the state, I worked in the Governor’s office, so that all helps working here.
For 10 years you worked with the Montgomery County Community Partnership as the Substance Abuse Prevention Specialist on assignment to the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services. What did you learn through this work on the county level?
That was where I really learned the importance of having many different disciplines working together. I coordinated the program called Drawing the Line on Underage Alcohol Use. It has about 30 to 40 different organizations that work together. Everything is done by consensus pretty much, unless the county executive orders the county agencies to do something. However, it goes beyond just the county agencies; it has private partners and nonprofit, community members, individuals. So, it was a wonderful learning experience for how to pull a collaboration together. It was also a learning experience because, when it started, really no one was addressing underage drinking. We were inventing the field as we went, so to speak, and that was very exciting and gave us opportunities to explore and try new things. Some of them worked; most of them worked to some extent, and there were a couple of flops. We did enough innovative work that we were awarded a runner-up status-semi-finalist status from the Harvard Kennedy School of Government for innovations in government. It was really thorough, bringing all the different viewpoints together. People who had never seen each other suddenly were working together. The recreation department was working with the liquor department and the police department. We could solve problems that couldn’t be solved otherwise. For instance, we were having trouble with parties in the hotels, and the hotels didn’t want the parties. Some people said they just wanted the money, but we very quickly found out that they lost money when they had teen parties because of the damage. They couldn’t figure out how to get rid of them. Finally, we called a meeting; we invited the hotels to send somebody to a meeting, and we sat there and brainstormed. The recreation people were able to tell us what kids like to do that the hotels could look for, and the police could tell us what they were finding at the parties that the hotels could look for. The hotels could tell us how they run their business. It turned out that we really learned a lot that day. We had been talking to the general managers, but the general managers aren’t there on Friday and Saturday nights. The security, front desk, and room service people are there. We needed to educate those people on what to look for and what to do when they found something, so we put together a one-page tip sheet of all those things to look for at an underage drinking party. We faxed that out in the middle of the night to the hotel security desk and the hotel front desk, and a police officer went into the hotel in the middle of the night and talked to them. At the same time, the Board of License Commissioners, who control liquor licenses, talked to the people who ran the room service, bars, and restaurants in the hotels to remind them about their legal responsibilities. A week later, one of the hotels called and said we think maybe we have an underage drinking party. The police went in, investigated it, and broke it up without disturbing anybody in the hotel, but we got coverage in the Washington Post, which killed hotel parties because we were onto them. The hotels also started calling in the minute they saw kids bringing in things like grocery bags of salty snacks-an underage drinking party. It was that kind of cooperation, after we had all those different people brainstorming together, that could solve something that we’d been struggling with for several years. That was the kind of thing that we were able to anticipate. They came up with controlled dispersal, which was how to control the parties so the kids wouldn’t jump in cars and drive off. We also came up with parent involvement programs. Because we had all these different people involved who knew their little piece of the problem, we could come up with the whole pie.
You’ve also worked in prevention on the state level from June 1998 to December 2001. You worked for the University of Maryland on assignment to the Governor’s office as Crime Control and Prevention Program Coordinator. What did you learn about the prevention field on the level of the state?
As a Program Coordinator, I really learned about the importance of fitting any kind of a program that comes with Federal funding into state political agendas, particularly if it is not a well-funded program. An underage drinking program from the Department of Justice gave each governor $350,000, so that’s a pretty small program, but by fitting it into the Governor’s agenda, we were able to amplify the effect. One of the things that I learned is the value of not having enough money; we were able to give each jurisdiction just a little bit of money. Some years, they only got $13,000 a piece, and that’s not enough money to do anything. It is enough money to pay for a few hours of somebody’s time to put together some mailings and call a meeting occasionally, but it makes people look at the money they already have and see if they’re spending it the best way. We’ve got some fabulous programs out there. Just a little money, plus networking across the state, plus educating people about programs out there led to things that they could do that didn’t cost a lot. Some counties really went to town and did some wonderful programs!
What kinds of programs?
It might be working with all-educating all the parents in a county about underage drinking parties, having them be aware of where their kids were going and what they were doing, and paring that up with an enforcement program. It might be getting a couple of counties or several police agencies to work together to do party controls where there was no law enforcement agency or not enough officers to do party control. They would collaborate to be able to do them once in a while to get the publicity, but it was important that they started collecting data. They began doing compliance checks because we required that they tell us whether they were doing these checks to find out how many stores were selling to the minors. Suddenly, people became aware of something and thought about what to do. So, then, they started doing something about it. Awareness became a big piece of it.
You have recently received several special awards and recognition. You have received the Jackson County, Mississippi Champion for Children Award (2002), the Montgomery Best County Partnership Award (2000, 2001), the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services Partnership Award (2000), and the Emergency Nurses CARE and National Emergency Nurse Association Certificate of Appreciation (1999). Would you like to say a little bit about these awards and what inspired them?
I think every award that I’ve ever received has been the result of teamwork. Programs of prevention are built by teams and, even when the award comes to me because of some part I played in it, it would not have come to me without that whole team. The one in Mississippi was to train them to build a team. And we had a team-a national team that went out and did trainings that were being recognized in that instance. The Montgomery County ones were, again, partnership awards that the county likes to see, programs where we partnered with private individuals, private organizations, businesses, and so forth because they knew that was where effective government work gets done. The Emergency Nurses award, again, was to recognize that we were partnering with them. So every single time, even if the award has my name on it, it really isn’t an award to Nancy Rea. It’s really an award to a group project.
That’s a nice perspective. Do you ever come across people that have difficulty with teamwork and try to do things on their own without collaborating?
I don’t think I’ve ever worked on a team that didn’t have one person who had their own agenda that they were trying to steamroller through the team. Usually, the team either gets them on board or kicks them off. Once in awhile, they may stay around in an ancillary role. On occasion, they serve a purpose even though they may have a very narrow agenda of their own. If it overlaps the team’s agenda, they may still be useful to the team. They are often a very forceful person who is willing to speak out. If what they are willing to speak out on is what the team wants, then it is okay. Otherwise, they become a disruptive force at the meetings. My experience has been somebody usually speaks up and says they are taking us off track, or let’s get back onto the topic, or some other usually polite reminder. Sometimes, these people then decide this isn’t where they’re going to get their agenda done, and there’s no value at the meeting. Other times, they hang in there and you have this person who is a bur under your saddle. If nothing else, that person sometimes helps the rest of the group be more cohesive because they know they have to stick together to make up for this person. Even a negative person can have a role. I’ve never had it happen, but if I were running the group and somebody was backing the group only to figure out what’s going to take place in order to counteract it, I would simply quit informing them of when the meetings were taking place or some other similar tactics. If push came to shove, I would pull them aside and say that I think maybe this isn’t the group for them. If it got really, really tough, then perhaps the group, as a whole, would have to do something to tell them that they were not welcome to come anymore. However, it has never gotten that bad.
Before your career as a substance abuse professional, you were an elementary school teacher and community activist. How do you feel your experiences in these roles contributed to your strength as a leader in the field of prevention?
They really are what led me into it. I cared about kids and what was happening to them. As a teacher…I took some time off to raise kids and did volunteer teaching. I realized that the kids nowadays were not ready to come to school. They had other things going on in their lives, and so I started working in things that would help kids be more ready to come to school and learn. Then, my daughter started complaining about kids drinking at the parties at about the same time that Gail Ewing started Drawing the Line on Underage Alcohol Use. So, I started working in that program as a volunteer and then got hired as a coordinator; it just led me right into that. But, basically over the years I’ve been advocating for things and following budgets, trying to convince bureaucracies to do things the way I thought they ought to be done. That was really what prepared me for my work in prevention because that’s working at the policy level. I have not done classroom prevention, I’m not a police officer, I’m not out there writing tickets to prevent people from doing things. It has all been working at the policy level, which comes out of my community activist background.
Do you feel a sense of common purpose with other professionals in public health and even with those professionals in other fields who also attempt to uplift individual and collective quality of life, such as professionals with more exclusive focus on education, law, politics, etc.?
Yes, I really do. A lot of the most interesting projects I’ve been involved in have originated in another field. Much of the work that I’ve done with law enforcement was at the request of law enforcement people who wanted their departments to get on board with prevention. I just recently completed a court watch at the request of a judge and with the cooperation of the State’s Attorney, Police Department, and the Corrections Department. They all wanted to know if the courts were handling alcohol cases in the best way. That kind of an opportunity is wonderful, and they are very focused on what they do. The first thing (I’ve done two court watches) I learned in the first court watch was that the people involved in the court do not understand the court. They only understand their little piece of it. So when we wanted to put together a background that said this is how the justice system works, nobody could give it to us. We had to go in there and dig it out by interviewing people: What’s your role in court? What do you do? Where do you get this from? Who do you give it to? We could then build a flowchart that people could understand about what’s happening to the kids when they go to court. It is really interesting to work with people who are very focused. Because I do collaborative work, I don’t have to go into depth in each of these; I just get a shallow understanding of a bunch of fields and see how they join together. I always know that I can go to my experts in each of these fields on an as-needed basis, so it gives me more of a general ability with people now.
What do you feel are the most critical issues that may influence the future of prevention and prevention practitioners on their own and nationwide?
I think the paradigm shift from ideology to science-based prevention is a very critical issue. There has to be balance between what we can prove and the fact that some part of prevention is an art-you have to be able to select the right program. You have to have people skills, and those are very hard things to research. You also have to balance between programs and policy and strategies. Right now, we’ve had a big wind shift from doing things that people say; you can’t prove that prevention works, so this is a good idea. Spending lots of money because people love this, it is politically popular, and so forth, to the opposite extreme that you can’t do it unless there’s science, research…it has got to be one of this list of proven programs. Currently, in the State of Maryland, I believe the ADAA grant for next year is going to require that the money be spent on a specific list issued by [Inaudible], which will be very limiting because not all of those programs fit-there isn’t always a program that fits the need. Sometimes, you have to invent new programs, so there needs to be a way to incorporate expanding programs, but still do it scientifically. On the other hand, we also need to look at the cost of effective environmental strategies; some of the funding streams are shutting those out. So, it is a balancing game, and this is going to be very difficult because it is complex. It’s behavior; it’s dealing with people and how they develop-all the issues for which we have no nice, neat answers. It’s not like building a road when you can say the pavement needs to be this thick if it is going to carry this kind of vehicle. It’s a little bit like medical science in that we know that prevention is cheaper, and we know that we can follow the public health model of the substance, user, and environment. However, we don’t yet have all the research we need to be able to do it as completely and scientifically as we would like. We’re kind of in flux here, and we’re not ready for some of the changes that are being pushed on us. A little bigger issue is that when budget crunch time comes, the human services are the ones that frequently get cut. They are viewed as luxuries. Yet, we end up paying extra down the road for making the cuts now. This is partly because it is politics-the people making the decisions run for office, and they have to show that they are successful by the next election if they are going to stay in office. Well, a lot of prevention work takes 10 to 15 years to be effective. They’re not going to get the benefit of it. They can show a new road that will get you home faster, they can show a new building of some sort, or a new service to give you food, but even things like food sometimes get ignored because the people receiving the services don’t have the strong connections to the policy makers. For instance, like some people who want to build a new business community or a new road, have other people with connections pushing for that. The family that’s hungry or that’s abusing their child probably is not in there pushing for services. Those are important prevention strategies, too. So, you see, we’re part of that bigger picture.
What resources would you recommend to other prevention professionals and advocates?
I think the most important resource that tends to be forgotten is the people resource. This is important for getting programs in place. We need people who are speaking up and asking for the programs. We also need high-quality people to implement the program. There’s a tendency among some people to say anybody can run an after-school program; you just need somebody there to watch the kids, and that’s not true. We need to select them as carefully as we select other professionals for their particular skills and for their longevity in staying in the job because they’re building relationships. So just having money to hire warm bodies isn’t enough. Just having science-based programs isn’t enough. We need to also look at how they’re implemented and who is doing the implementation. We also need to be pulling in people to demand services. For other areas, such as if you have the need for a heart transplant, you probably have friends and relatives out there championing payment for heart transplants. If you need help raising your child, you may not have as many friends and family out there advocating for programs, so we’ve got to work on that. And I think the other thing is that everybody working in prevention needs to be sure that they’re staying up to date with new discoveries and new research because it’s coming down the line so fast. This is where we’re going to get really respected, by being able to show. We also need to improve our efforts in getting better data. We’ve got to find ways to measure the effectiveness of what we’re doing and demonstrate the problem-this number of people are doing this, and we can reduce that number by doing such and such. We’ve got to document, we’ve got to research, and we’ve got to bring in all the right people.
Do you have any other advice that you would like to give prevention professionals that might be reading this interview?
I think people need to talk about how much fun it is. This really is an exciting field, and you meet a lot of interesting people. The programs themselves are frequently fun to do. We need to make it also worth their while economically as a career. It is fun, but it is a bit like teaching. Teaching is fun, too, but we’re realizing now that we have to pay teachers, and so teachers’ salaries are going up. Human services jobs don’t get paid the way computer service jobs do. Partly because people are more fun to work with than computers, but they are also very important, and people need to feel that what they’re doing is important. We measure that by money in this society.
Thank you so much, Ms. Rea, for interviewing with ePrevco.com. Site users will benefit greatly from the prevention experience and perspective that you share.
Thank you for providing the service of putting information out for people.
|
