Environmental Management Approaches to Reduce Binge and High-Risk Alcohol Use and Other Drug Problems

A central feature of the U.S. Department of Education’s Higher Education Center for Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Violence Prevention is the promotion of multiple prevention strategies that affect campus and surrounding community environments as a whole and can, thereby, have a large-scale effect on the entire campus community. As described in the College Alcohol Risk Assessment Guide: Environmental Approaches to Prevention, this approach reflects a public health perspective. A distinctive feature of public health is that it focuses mainly on communities, not individuals. A public health perspective stresses that problems arise through reciprocal relationships among an individual (host), a direct cause (agent), and the environment. In the case of alcohol problems, the direct cause is alcohol, and the environment is the social and physical context in which drinking occurs. Public health prevention strategies place particular emphasis on ways to shape the environment to reduce alcohol-related problems.

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