The 130th Annual Meeting of APHA

Abstract #47490

Sonya Butler Merrill, PhD, Deputy Director, National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information, P. O. Box 2345, Rockville, MD 20847-2345, 301-468-2600 (ext. 312), smerrill@health.org

Overview: Substance abuse prevention messages are based on the principles of health communication. According to Graeff, Elder, and Booth (1993), health communication is the systematic attempt to positively influence the health practices of large populations. To that end, the primary goal of health communication is to bring about improvement in health practices and, in turn, health status. This is an admirable goal, but one fraught

The bigger challenge is to help prevention practitioners assess the effectiveness and impact of the messages they send and the information about resources they provide. Exploration of several evaluation approaches is the focus of this presentation.

Purpose: Consistent the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention’s emphasis on the use of evidenced-based approaches to assess prevention initiatives, the presentation considers an evaluation protocol for measuring the effectiveness of uniform prevention messages that are comparable in design to product branding. The specific elements of the presentation are to:

• Describe the strategy in terms of a pilot information dissemination outreach program underway at SAMHSA’s National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information.

• Present a research design to accomplish the assessment of the program, including methods for gathering feedback from target audiences like substance abuse prevention professionals.

• Discuss the results in terms of the outreach program’s objectives and the application of the assessment protocol to other health information dissemination venues.

Learning Objectives: