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Early Intervention

Early Intervention is a prevention strategy targeted at individuals and groups at risk of developing substance abuse problems. It focuses on youth who, because of their family situation, individual characteristics, or environment, have risk factors known to be correlated with alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use. Because early intervention is more intensive and specialized than, say, educational campaigns about the dangers of drug abuse, it is not used for large populations of people. The term "early intervention" refers not only to prenatal and early childhood interventions, that is, "early" in a child’s life, but also to those strategies that work with young people of all ages who are just beginning to exhibit serious behavioral problems, including substance abuse.

Specific resources contained on this site include the following:

Early Intervention: A Strategy for Prevention Practitioners.
A 20 page paper on early intervention: What it means as a prevention strategy and how you can incorporate it into your work as
a prevention practitioner. This document addresses:
• the benefits of early intervention as a prevention strategy
• skill-building and early education of children, youth, and families
• interventions for troubled youth
• therapeutic interventions for youth and their families

Early Intervention Fact Sheet and Illustration (Webpage, Acrobat 2 pages) This document describes how early intervention is used in substance abuse prevention, plus an illustration—a real-life example of early intervention in action.

Early Intervention Video. Created by CSAP’s Northeast CAPT, this video features a program that helps children in preschool to grade six resolve interpersonal problems and prevent anti-social behavior.

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.

Early Intervention Resources. This document contains a list of resources—both online and in print—designed to help you implement early intervention strategies in your community.