Developing prevention goals and objectives

After completing the needs assessment, the second step is the determination and formulation of prevention goals or objectives which must be realistic, specific and attainable. For example the goal of a drug free community within the next two years could be considered very unrealistic.

A more attainable goal would be, for example, to reduce drug consumption in a local community by 30% within a two year period. One good way to develop prevention goals is to assign this task to a small group of experts familiar with needs assessment, thus creating a task force comprising key-persons from the community - school counselors, teachers, health educators, local researchers, representatives of the municipality - who would prepare a "white paper" and a plan of preventive action, to be subsequently discussed and accepted by the local community.

A small group would then prepare a plan to educate and train primary health care officers in the early recognition of drug health education and drug use problems and how to deal with young people. Another group could formulate objectives for inclusion in a school curriculum.

Here, it is very important to involve teachers and school counselors in the early planning stages, in order to ensure greater support once the programme begins.

Finally, it is important to monitor and evaluate goals during the implementation of the prevention programme, changing the initial goals if these prove to be unrealistic.