Substance Abuse Prevention in Multicultural Communities

This insightful volume describes a sample of prevention demonstration projects of the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP). Substance Abuse Prevention in Multicultural Communities illuminates various aspects of prevention theory, practice, and research with a focus on the design, implementation, adaptation, and outcome of specific demonstration programs. Researchers work with prevention professionals to describe, measure, and intensify effects of interventions upon both intermediate problems and the ultimate long-term goal of decreasing substance abuse.

Chapters in Substance Abuse Prevention in Multicultural Communities demonstrate how the CSAP demonstration logic model works. The process of prevention program design begins with an analysis of the root causes of the problem as defined by the specific community and illuminated by theory. Comprehensive prevention programs that buttress community strengths and build on local resources are then designed to deal with these problems. The programs you’ll learn from include:

• a leadership and substance abuse prevention program, based on the social influence model, for girls in grades 6-8 from four geographically and ethnically diverse communities

• a program intricately designed to build resiliency and protective factors within young at-risk American Indian children in a Head Start program which addresses school transition, school readiness, school attendance, and classroom-based prevention activities.

• a family skills training program for African American parents in substance abuse treatment, which evolved in response to client and evaluation feedback

• a program for Native American families, which uses a culturally oriented curriculum emphasizing traditional values, beliefs, and practices

• a coalition of neighborhood agencies, organized to provide a comprehensive array of school and community-based prevention services, which impacted gang membership in inner-city Latino youth.

• a prevention program specifically designed to serve the diverse needs of Asian-American youth from five different Asian ethnic communities

• a model substance abuse prevention program implemented to provide counseling, mentoring, and academic support to Hispanic and African-American students in an urban public middle school

• the nationally recognized FAST program which strengthens the family and brings parents and schools together in building up protective factors for high risk elementary students

• a program that combines several complementary strategies to develop personal and communal empowerment in Native American communities.

  Substance Abuse Prevention in Multicultural Communities illustrates the wealth of information generated by demonstration programs. Unlike a standard research protocol that imposes and tests a rigid, single-focused intervention under carefully controlled circumstances, these programs do science in real-life situations, documenting and measuring effects of multiple interventions.