Substance use prevention and public health, part 1: Recognizing the role of prevention in a wider field

Series description: Substance use prevention is one of many human service fields that seek to improve the overall health and wellbeing of populations and communities. Collectively, these fields are known as public health. There are many areas of overlap across public health fields— from the types of issues that service providers seek to address, to the kinds of interventions they implement, to the community metrics they use to assess success, among others. However, despite these similarities, many public health professionals—including substance use prevention professionals—are unfamiliar with the work other professionals are doing in their communities or the opportunities for collaboration that exist. 

Course description: This webinar will provide a broad overview of public health and what can be the role of the substance use prevention field within it. It will describe the idea of public health and the similarities that exist across its service fields, such as: a focus on preventing issues before individuals require clinical services, seeking to address environmental factors and the social determinants of health, reducing health disparities, and implementing population-level services, among others. The webinar will also explain how substance use prevention should be and is a critical part of public health. As part of this, it will describe the best practices from public health that prevention professionals can incorporate into their work. Lastly, it will define what a “culture of prevention” is and how prevention professionals can take lessons learned from other public health fields to expand it.