Northeast > Resources > Prevention Materials > Prevention Strategies > Communications

Communications

Communications can be broadly defined as "purposive attempts to inform, persuade, or motivate behavior changes in a relatively well-defined and large audience." The tools it offers-public education, social marketing, media advocacy, and media literacy-can be used by prevention practitioners to promote young people's involvement in positive activies, while diminishing media's negative influence in fostering unhealthy behaviors, such as the use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs.

Specific resources contained on this site include the following:

Communications: A Strategy for Prevention Practitioners.
A 20-page paper on communications: What it means as a prevention strategy and how you can incorporate it into your work
as a prevention practitioner. It addresses issues such as public education, social marketing, media advocacy, and media literacy.

Communications Fact Sheet and Illustration (Webpage, Acrobat 2 pages) A fact sheet that describes how communications strategies are used in substance abuse prevention, plus an illustration—a real-life example of communications in action.

Communications Video. Created by CSAP’s Northeast CAPT, this
video features a community initiative that involved a newspaper series in Portland, Maine, on the human and financial costs of alcohol abuse.

This video is accessible using windows media player 9 series for Windows 98 2nd ed., Me, and 2000. Click here to download it. Click here to read transcript.

Communications Resources. This document contains a list of resources—both online and in print—designed to help you implement communictions strategies in your community.