[An experience with health education for high school students]

In Italy, measures for the prevention of drug addiction have often been directed solely towards providing information and creating greater awareness. Fisher and Fisher (1992), instead, propose a model based on three factors, Information-Motivation-Behavioural Skills, for the planning of programs for the prevention of health risk behaviour. This model provided the basis for the pilot experience of a health education course for the prevention of drug use, which involved 417 students in two high schools in Rome. This experience shows that efforts to prevent drug use in young people, if focused only on content, risk failure because young people already seem to possess the basic information concerning the risks connected to substance abuse. For this reason, there is a need for the organization of encounters for confrontation and debate in order to favour the acquisition of the capabilities needed to confront a potential problem of substance abuse.