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The People First Task Force Inventory: Understanding One Service's Activities to Prevent and Respond to Harmful and
Introduction:
Harmful and destructive behaviors are longstanding concerns for the Department of Defense (DoD) because they degrade force readiness. Despite decades of action, limited information is available about the extent that prevention activities are comprehensive, integrated, and effective, and the full prevention landscape is largely unknown. In 2021, the Defense Centers for Public Health-Aberdeen and the U.S. Army's People First Task Force conducted an environmental scan to understand this landscape. This article primarily examines whether reported prevention activities embodied best practices in development and evaluation.
Materials And Methods:
The scan was conducted from June to August 2021 using an electronic tool to identify and describe activities across all Army Components designed to address harmful behaviors like those indicated in DoD Instruction 6400.09. The tool included questions associated with effective prevention systems and activities, including systematic development and formal evaluation indicators. Data were summarized and stratified by various factors (e.g., activity type).
Results:
The Inventory contained 270 valid prevention activities, with most reported as local or Command initiatives (81%). Suicide prevention (71%) was the most frequently reported target outcome. Thirty percent of activities reported more than 1 systematic development practice, and 71% of activities did not engage in formal evaluation. Activities addressing substance abuse and sexual assault and harassment prevention, respectively, reported using more best practices in development than activities addressing other outcomes. The majority (63%) of programs had been formally evaluated compared to initiatives (7%) and pilots (8%).
Conclusions:
This Inventory highlighted gaps in programming and is a crucial step toward understanding and improving the Army's prevention work. Its findings offer important considerations for optimizing DoD prevention activities. Inventories and scans are essential to ensure comprehensive, systematic, and integrated activity sets for preventing and mitigating harmful behaviors and may be an emergent best practice within the DoD prevention system.
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