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Why Prevention Needs More Than Individual Empowerment: Reclaiming Environmental Prevention
Gregor Burkhart1, Maximilian von Heyden2
1EUSPR, Geneva, Switzerland. gregorbu@gmail.com.
Journal of Prevention (2022)
|July 15, 2026
Summary
Prevention science overemphasizes individual empowerment, neglecting environmental factors. A shift towards balancing individual (i-frame) and structural (s-frame) approaches is crucial for effective public health interventions.
Area of Science:
- Public Health
- Behavioral Science
- Sociology
Background:
- Contemporary prevention discourse focuses on individual empowerment (i-frame) for resisting harms like substance use and violence.
- While individual-level interventions have evidence, the field has increasingly sidelined environmental, regulatory, and commercial determinants.
- This imbalance is reinforced by market-fundamentalist ideologies and vested interests favoring individual-focused policies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To analyze the overreliance on individual-level prevention strategies (i-frame) in contemporary public health.
- To critique the neglect of environmental, regulatory, and commercial determinants (s-frame) in prevention.
- To propose correctives for rebalancing individual and structural approaches in prevention science.
Main Methods:
- Drawing on the i-frame/s-frame distinction (Chater & Loewenstein).
- Referencing classical public health scholarship (Rose, McKinlay, Marmot, Marteau).
- Tracing the trend across six domains: substance use, bullying, child sexual abuse, youth violence, gender-based prevention, and gambling.
Main Results:
- The field exhibits a near-monopoly of the i-frame, sidelining more effective structural determinants.
- A market-fundamentalist "Illegitimacy Thesis" and vested interests reinforce this individual-centric drift.
- High-quality individual programs are limited by adverse environmental factors, highlighting the need for a balanced approach.
Conclusions:
- Prevention science must move beyond an i-frame monopoly to a complementary i-frame/s-frame balance.
- Correctives include restoring environmental language, viewing prevention as social ecologies, and addressing vested interests.
- Relearning the lesson from historical public health: address systemic issues (like water quality) rather than solely individual behaviors.
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