Step Five:  IMPLEMENT THE PREVENTION STRATEGY

In Step Three, you were provided with recommendations and tools to develop an action plan designed to prepare and increase the readiness of your program and your community’s readiness for action. In Step Four, you were encouraged to review the results of your action plan, ensure the adequacy of program resources, review training needs, review with staff policies and procedures, prepare for resistance, and consider the need for additional partners.

In Step Five, you are provided with tools that reflect the fact that your prevention program shares many similarities with businesses. As a result, certain basic business practices are reviewed here, such as advertising the implementation of your program, convening regular meetings, providing support to staff, providing ongoing supervision, supporting ongoing communication, regularly reviewing action steps and timelines, and continually documenting project activities.

In addition, this step provides useful information about engaging in promotion and publicity efforts, such as developing program materials, developing press releases, developing press packets, convening press conferences, conducting press briefings, and participating in media interviews. It is important to note that prevention programs have different goals and objectives. Some are intended to be large, long-lasting, multicomponent efforts, while others will be targeted, brief, and simple. Certainly, not all environmental approaches to substance abuse prevention should take the form of comprehensive media campaigns or should involve extensive use of media campaign tools. However, this tutorial provides information about using these tools, since even modest prevention programs may benefit from knowing about and using some of these tools.