Ed Virant, project coordinator for Drug-Free Programs in the Omaha Public Schools in Omaha, Nebraska, talks about the necessity of infusing prevention efforts into the curriculum and community rather than supplementing such programs into one school day every few months. Excerpted from the video series Schools That Work: The Research Advantage, videoconference #6, Preparing Students for Drug-Free Lifestyles (North Central Regional Educational Laboratory, 1992).
"We still have people who look at prevent as being a one shot curriculum component where you bring in a speaker. You're not going to go in and do an activity and then bring in a speaker and then have kids say I'm never going to use drugs or alcohol in my life. I think that's totally unrealistic, and what you need to do is have a cooperative effort of the community, all those agencies, the law enforcements, the churches, civic organizations, service organizations, the corporate community working with parents and the schools together, being a realist, I think what you need to do is build your programs that the dollars are going to dry up, so what you try to do is institutionalize concepts, and it's basically the foundation that we build our prevent programming on."
This Critical Issue was researched and written by Richard Brooks, Director, Health Promotion Project, University of Wisconsin at Madison.
Date posted: 1996