A statewide substance abuse prevention plan for Rhode Island

The State of Rhode Island contracted with the authors to prepare a statewide, comprehensive substance abuse prevention plan. The literature review revealed a lack of research on statewide planning for prevention services. To obtain data for Rhode Island’s plan, the authors conducted a family of studies including synthetic estimation, key informant interviews, a telephone survey of agency directors, program budget analysis, construction of a statistical index for estimating the optimal geographic allocation of prevention dollars, and a review of General Laws regarding tobacco, alcohol, and other drugs. Their recommendations include the increased funding and coordination of prevention services, allocating services according to need rather than popula-tion size, greater use of social policy as a prevention tool, and a shift in primary prevention programming from senior high to lower grades and in program emphasis from information-education to psychosocial programs. In 1990 we were asked to develop a substance abuse prevention plan for the state of Rhode Island (McAuliffe et al. 1992). Three years earlier the state asked us to develop a similar plan for treatment services (McAuliffe et al. 1987, 1991). These two projects have forced us to think about the similarities and differences involved in treatment and prevention planning. It is apparen