Prevention in college health: counseling perspectives

Such problems as sexually transmitted diseases, alcohol and other drug use, and acquaintance rape require college health professionals to function in primary and secondary preventive roles. In this article, the authors draw upon counseling literature and college health practice to identify the central elements of preventive programs, highlight specific intervention formats used in preventive work, and describe how interventions are assembled into coherent programs of prevention. To illustrate the structure and process of long-range, institutionalized preventive efforts, the authors describe an initiative addressing the primary, secondary, and tertiary prevention of substance use at a health sciences campus.