Provide a short description of the intervention you developed and how you plan on evaluating it.

Provide a short description of the intervention you developed and how you plan on evaluating it.

Several interventions can be used to curb substance abuse among adolescents, including family, internet, and school-based primary intervention programs and mass media campaigns. School-based primary prevention programs (SBPPs) mainly focus on developing links between school and substance abuse agencies and professionals to educate the adolescents about the drugs before they are initiated. Hence, they are more effective than other intervention programs. SBPPs also provide individual and group counseling for those addicted, assisting them in recovering from drug abuse. To evaluate SBPPs, pre and post-test intervention data should be collected to determine the changes that have taken place (Das et al., 2016). For example, students/adolescents enrolled in the program should be assessed to determine their knowledge level and behaviors before and after interventions to determine the program’s impact.

Family-based intensive interventions aim at promoting positive adolescent behavior by improving communication and relationship between children and their parents, hence increasing the likelihood of positive behavior. Mass media and internet-based interventions mainly use digital spaces to communicate to adolescents about substance use. Mostly these interventions are designed to communicate the negative impacts of substance abuse on the health and general well-being of the patient (Ball, 2019). Other interventions such as policy interventions regulate the availability of drugs to adolescents; for example, some drugs cannot be sold to those under 21 years, while incentive interventions provide incentives to sponsor healthy competition and rewards that shift adolescents’ focus from substance abuse. To evaluate these interventions, practices such as surveys can be conducted to assess the level of knowledge about substance abuse among adolescents, data from public health agencies and those that deal with substance abuse can be retrieved to determine the trends in drug use (Henneberger et al., 2019).

After the evaluation, the data should be analyzed to ensure it is correct and then justify the conclusions. The data should then be shared with the relevant stakeholders such as schools, public health agencies, and substance abuse agencies. Other interested parties should also be able to access the obtained data. The data can be used to review the program and make the necessary adjustments, or it can be used to develop an entirely new program/intervention (Ellickson, 2020).

References

Ball, E. (2019). Exploring the behavioural outcomes of family-based intensive interventions. Dealing with Welfare Conditionality: Implementation and Effects, 149. https://books.google.co.ke/books?hl=en&lr=&id=2caHDwAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PA149&dq=Family