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Professor Richard F. Catalano
Using Prevention Science to Guide Positive Youth Development in
Communities: Communities That Care
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Crime, risky sexual behaviour, drug abuse, school failure and
dropout are pressing problems that co-occur in individuals and
neighbourhoods and are predicted by common precursors. These
precursors are located in the developmental experiences of children.
Until relatively recently, one of the major impediments to effective
promotion and prevention was the absence of a framework for
empirically based programming. Prevention and promotion efforts often
failed because they were based on models of adolescent behaviours that
were inconsistent with the empirical evidence. However tremendous
strides have been made in identifying longitudinal predictors, often
called risk and protective factors, of adolescent positive and
negative behaviours. Programs that reduce risk and enhance protection
are likely to interrupt the processes that produce adolescent problems
and enhance the processes that promote positive youth development.
Carefully conducted evaluations have demonstrated that they are able
to reduce risk, enhance protection and, in some long-term follow-up
studies, promote positive development and reduce problem behaviours.
For the last 15 years, Dr. Catalano and his colleagues at the Social
Development Research Group have been developing methods to organize
the scientific knowledge base for prevention in ways that empower
communities to use it to organize, assess and prioritise needs, and
choose effective approaches that meet their needs. This approach,
called Communities That Care, has been implemented in most states in
the US as well as in the UK, the Netherlands, and Australia. This
approach requires accurate information on which risk and protective
factors are elevated in communities. This presentation will describe
the knowledge base for prevention science and its application in
Communities That Care. |
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