Political Science, Public Policy, and Drug Use Prevention

Abstract

Increasingly, drug use prevention programs and research are being considered in the environmental contexts in which they occur. One context that is rarely considered is the political context. This article examines the reciprocal effects of policy and prevention programs from four perspectives representing different contexts, beginning with political science, and followed by social work and public health administration, psychology, and education. Four specific issues are considered. First is how current national policies on drug use shape our nation's prevention efforts, from a political science perspective. Second is how effective prevention programs can affect and shape policy change. This issue is considered from a social and public health administration perspective. Third is how policy change can act as an intervention to prevent drug use, from the perspective of psychology. The fourth issue is how dissemination of prevention programs and policies can impact drug use prevention. This question considers an educational perspective. The perspectives are integrated into a general conceptual model to improve our understanding of how drug use prevention occurs in a national political context. Finally, examples are given of how this model might inform the other perspectives represented in this special issue on transdisciplinary drug abuse prevention research.

• Communication network
• Prevention
• Drug use
• Principle of effectiveness
• Policy
• Policy compliance
• Youth, program diffusion
• Supply and demand reduction policy
• Program fidelity
• Evidence-based programs

Notes

¹The journal's style utilizes the category substance abuse as a diagnostic category. Substances are used or misused; living organisms are and can be abused. Editor's note.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mary Ann Pentz

Mary Ann Pentz, Ph.D., is Director of the Center for Prevention Policy Research and Professor in the Department of Preventive Medicine at the University of Southern California. For over a decade, Dr. Pentz's research has focused on community and policy approaches to tobacco, alcohol, and drug abuse prevention in youth. She has published widely in psychology, public health, and medical journals on the use of multicomponent approaches to community-based prevention that include mass media. Her findings from longitudinal prevention trials contributed to the formulation of a U.S. Senate bill, and use of evidence-based criteria for appropriating funds for prevention under the Safe and Drug Free Schools Act. Dr. Pentz has chaired the NIDA Epidemiology and Prevention study section, and has served on the evaluation advisory boards for CSAP's Community Partnership grants program and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Fighting Back Initiative. She also served on the Office of National Drug Control Policy's Campaign Design Expert panel to design the new antidrug abuse media campaign. She received her baccalaureate in Psychology from Hamilton College and her doctorate in Psychology from Syracuse University in 1978.

David Mares

David R. Mares, (Ph.D., Harvard University, 1982) Professor of Political Science and Adjunct Professor at the Graduate School of International Relations and Pacific Studies. He was previously Profesor-Investigador at El Colegio de México (1980–82), Fulbright Professor at the Universidad de Chile (1989), and Visiting Professor at the Diplomatic Academy in Ecuador (1995). He is the author of four books and 45 articles and book chapters.

Steve Schinke

Steven Schinke, Ph.D., is a Professor at Columbia University School of Social Work. During his tenure at Columbia, and previously when he was with the University of Washington, Dr. Schinke has focused his studies on the development and testing of interventions to prevent smoking, alcohol abuse, and drug abuse and to modify other health behaviors among high-risk American children and adolescents. In addition to other forums, findings from Dr. Schinke's research have appeared in the New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association.His current work, sponsored by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, focuses on the design and testing of programs to help children and adolescents prevent serious health problems while they are still young and easily able to alter their lifestyles and everyday practices. His intervention programs have increasingly employed interactive technology to deliver prevention programs to youths and their families and communities. Dr. Schinke has conducted randomized clinical trials with Native American children, with youths who live in publicly subsidized housing developments, and with Black and Hispanic youngsters from the greater New York City area. His Ph.D. is from the University of Wisconsin at Madison, as is his undergraduate degree.

Louise Ann Rohrbach

Louise Ann Rohrbach, Ph.D., M.P.H. is currently an Associate Professor of Research at the University of Southern California Institute for Prevention Research. Dr. Rohrbach received her Ph.D. in health behavior research at the University of Southern California, and her Masters of Public Health, specializing in health education, at the University of California, Los Angeles. She has more than 20 years of experience as a program developer, researcher, and evaluator in the tobacco, alcohol, and other drug abuse prevention field. Recently, Dr. Rohrbach completed the six-year Independent Evaluation of the California Tobacco Control Program, on which she served as Scientific Director. Currently, she is the principal investigator on a grant focusing on implementation of evidence-based tobacco prevention approaches in California's schools (funded by the California Tobacco-Related Disease Research Program). Also, she is the Co-Investigator on a components study of Project Towards No Drug Abuse, a high school-based substance abuse prevention program. Her primary research interests are dissemination of evidence-based prevention programs, theory-driven evaluation of health promotion programs, and gender differences in adolescent substance abuse. Dr. Rohrbach's other work includes contributions to a broad range of community and school-based experimental trials, including those focused on pregnancy prevention, HIV/AIDS prevention, violence prevention, and health promotion. She has published widely in the areas of tobacco and other substance use prevention, school-based health, and etiology of tobacco use among adolescents.