Prevention, Intervention, Communications, and Outreach

Prevention and intervention.

Prevention and intervention strategies seek to reduce drinking, or to prevent driving by people who have been drinking. Prevention and intervention work through laws, policies, and programs that:

• control hours, locations, and promotions of alcohol sales;
• implement responsible alcohol service practices;
• control alcohol purchase and use through increased alcohol taxes and restrictions on consumption in public locations such as parks and sports facilities; or
• provide alternatives to driving for people who have been drinking.

Prevention and intervention measures are especially important for those under 21 years old. These are discussed in the Youth section that follows, with further discussion of one-star and two-star countermeasures included in Appendix A1.

Many prevention and intervention measures fall under the authority of a State’s alcohol control agency rather than the SHSO. However, the SHSO can be a critical partner in many prevention and intervention. Only countermeasures directly associated with drinking and driving are discussed in this section. For information regarding more general countermeasures directed at alcohol, see Alcohol Epidemiology Program (2000), Grube and Stewart (2004), National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (2018), and Toomey and Wagenaar (1999).

Communications and outreach.

Communications and outreach strategies seek to inform the public of the dangers of driving while impaired by alcohol or drugs and to promote positive social norms of not driving while impaired. As with prevention and intervention, education through  communications and outreach strategies is especially important for youth under 21 years old. Education may occur through formal classroom settings, social media, news media, paid advertisements and PSAs, and a wide variety of other communication channels such as posters, billboards, web banners, and the like.

Communication and outreach strategies are critical parts of many deterrence and prevention strategies. This section discusses only stand-alone communication and outreach countermeasures.