Environmental change strategies targeting drug abuse prevention

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the three articles included in a special focus of Drugs: Education, Prevention, and Policy that address environmental change strategies targeting drug abuse prevention. We define environmental change strategies and their effectiveness in public health domains such as alcohol abuse, smoking, and obesity. We then discuss the three articles, each of which addresses different aspects of how environmental change strategies might be best implemented and measured. The first paper by Agley et al. (2014) examines the challenges of implementing an evidence-based practice, specifically screening, brief intervention, and referral to treatment to address drug abuse in primary care settings. The second paper by Kreiner et al. looks at encouraging providers to implement safe prescribing practices for controlled substances and to translate work being done in the medical community to the prevention specialist domain. The third paper by Quinlan et al. conducts a review of the literature on environmental change strategies targeting nonmedical use of marijuana and provides results showing the most and least effective of these interventions. This special focus is intended to build the evidence base for effective environmental change strategies to prevent drug abuse, generate critical analyses, and spur future research that will help improve the implementation and evaluation of such interventions

Evaluating Environmental Change Strategies: Challenges and Solutions

In this introductory article we define environmental change strategies (ECS), summarize the primary challenges associated with evaluating ECS, and provide an overview of the methods researchers have employed to begin to address these challenges. This special issue provides a range of examples, from researchers and practitioners in the field, of different approaches for addressing these challenges. These articles present new methods to understand and test how ECS are implemented and propose methods to evaluate their implementation. The content of the articles covers multiple public health issues, including substance abuse prevention, tobacco control, HIV prevention, and obesity prevention. This special issue is intended to build the evidence base for effective ECS, generate compelling discussion, critical analyses, and spur future research that will help improve the implementation and evaluation of ECS. © 2012 Society for Community Research and Action (outside the USA)