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Program Offerings & Goals
Health Education 617.627.5495
The Tufts Approach: Program Goals
The overarching goal of the Tufts' AOD Program is to coordinate a visible, comprehensive,
research-based prevention & treatment program that links existing services &
responds to the identified needs of students.
The Tufts AOD program takes a two part approach. On the one hand, focus
is kept on the personal and the individual what information does a student have about
alcohol and drugs? What factors go into individual decision-making? How is it best to
assess the true risk of students who experience alcohol poisoning? What can Tufts do
for those students needing treatment? And, how to address the specific needs of an
individual in recovery to optimize his or her academic success?
On the other hand, alcohol and drug use is addressed in its broader context by keeping
in mind the complexity of relationships, values, understandings of self and identity,
cultural norms, economics, politics and history. While no program can address all of
these complexities, it is our belief that they must at least be acknowledged and
explored. Historically, alcohol and drug prevention has emphasized the negative
consequences of use by college students and has responded to this with judgment and
punitive action sometimes appropriately, but more often mistakenly.
The Tufts AOD Program provides realistic and accurate information about risk-taking
while understanding that healthy exploration that neither negatively affect one's
community nor one's overall health and wellness - may be important and positive aspects
of everyone's development. The goal is to promote informed decision making about alcohol
and drug use within a health promotion and wellness context. This is based on the
fundamental belief that each person at Tufts has a role in creating and maintaining
the highest standard of a healthy, safe, and equitable, diverse and productive campus
community and that we each accept our responsibility to this role when we choose to
study, work, lead, and teach here.
In addition to the principles articulated above, program staff draws on several
theoretical foundations to direct the work toward effective practice:
- Behavior Change Theory - Directs students to explore personal attitudes,
peer opinions and their social/political milieu factors which, according to the
theory of reasoned action, heavily influence intention, the main predictor of
behavior. This is accompanied by skills practice in personalizing prevention
information and messages; critiquing media, social and political influences;
and identifying positive relationships and personal goals.
- Harm Reduction Involves strategies that accept some amount of drug
and alcohol use as a given and attempt to reduce the negative consequences,
incorporating a spectrum of strategies from safer use, to managed use, to abstinence.
- Targeted Prevention/Intervention Science Acknowledges that in order
to be most effective, prevention must be targeted, culturally appropriate and
truly address the unique concerns and the specific political, social and
relationship issues of its participants. An awareness and acknowledgment of
the commonalities within a specific target group must be incorporated into all
AOD prevention, intervention and treatment efforts. Targeted prevention is
directly related to oppression theory which allows for 1) the consideration
of "ism's" and how the different forms of discrimination create
a context for health and disease and 2) a focus on inequity as a health
promoting strategy. Discrimination and phobias clearly contribute to risk
making alcohol and drug use truly a community issue.
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