Back to Annual Meeting

Back to Annual Meeting

APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Amy L. Flowers, PhD, Market Decisions, 75 Washington Avenue, Suite 206, Portland, ME 04101, 207-767-6440 x103, aflowers@marketdecisions.com

CDC counsels legislators, policy makers, and other program-funders to assess “reduced susceptibility to experimentation with tobacco products” as a measure of a program's success when evaluating prevention and intervention programs . School administrators, program directors and others frequently use risk and protection models to assess susceptibility and identify service needs. Both the risk and protective factors and the CDC outcome indicators, however, are measures of abstract experiences, attitudes and beliefs. These measures do not identify specific, at-risk youth for inclusion into programs or services. In addition, many point to broad, controversial categories such as racial or socioeconomic groups or single-parent household status. While useful in explaining the causes of ATOD use, these measures do little to empower administrators with the ability to identify and treat at-risk youth.

This presentation (oral or poster) will clarify the legal and pragmatic issues surrounding risk identification and program/service targeting, demonstrate the identification and prioritization of concrete identifiers, and suggest specific targeting methods and opportunities for use in school and community programs or service offerings.

The presentation will offer a data-driven, empirical example drawn from the Monitoring the Future 2005 dataset. The example will illustrate the selection of identifiers based on four basic requirements: sensitivity, specificity, accuracy and accessibility. Identifiers will be prioritized and entered into a logic model and an outreach plan will be constructed.

Learning Objectives:

• Assess the sensitivity, specificity, accuracy and accessibility of risk-identifiers and causal concepts;
• Develop an analytic plan for constructing a list of best-identifiers for their community, school setting or population of interest;
• Prioritize identifiers based on the strength of their predictive ability;
• Construct an outreach plan based upon the needs of the target population.

Keywords: Risk Assessment, Tobacco Policy

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Not Answered