Prevention Talk # 1 - A Culture of Prevention: What does that mean and how would it affect research and practice?

A recent commentary in Prevention Science, [Sloboda, Z., David, S.B. Commentary on the Culture of Prevention. Prev Sci (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-020-01158-8 ] explored the concept of a culture of prevention and what that means to research and practice. The commentary was requested by the Associate Editors of a Special Issue on the topic. In the call to scientists for articles, the journal defined the concept as the “general orientation or readiness of a group of people…to address problems by using a preventive, rather than a reactive approach.”

But how do we normally address serious behavioral health problems? Generally, it is piecemeal. We first identify a problem—often affecting large numbers of people, then devise programming to prevent them in the future.  And generally, the focus is on treatment first. While we believe in ‘preventing problems before they happen,’ operationally we rarely build such programming without a recognition of serious problems that have…