Practitioners Specialty Track 5: Media-Based Prevention- 86Hrs.

Training Hours
86 training hours

This track discusses the science inherent in effective media-based substance use prevention interventions with a focus on developing successful persuasive communications. It also provides experiential learning in planning messages and media for reaching parents and youth in substance use prevention efforts. It comprises the following six courses:

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UPC 51: Introduction to Media and Their Use in Prevention

This course presents basic information relative to media campaigns including the steps for effective campaign planning. It also underscores the importance of understanding culture and the use of social media.

UPC 52: The Nature of Media and Theories of How the Media Affect the Audience

This course describes how the Theory of Planned Behavior forms the foundation for persuasion and is applied in media messaging and media campaigns. It also explains the importance of Hovland’s Message Learning Theory of Persuasion and how to apply it to media messages and campaigns.

UPC 53: Practical Application of Persuasion in Substance Use Prevention

This course discusses ways in which the media can be used to people avoid substance use. It also explains how to develop a media campaign to target substance use problems.

UPC 54: Improving the Impact of Media Campaigns

This course describes the media’s role in prevention and how they work in persuasive prevention. It also presents the advantages of mass media for communication, namely Reach, Return and Rapid Response.

UPC 55: Monitoring and Evaluating Media Messages

This course focus on various aspects related to monitoring and evaluating media messages such as developing measures of the media campaign’s audience’s knowledge, attitudes, and intentions to use psychoactive substances, using pre-and post-assessments of these measures to determine campaign effectiveness, and determining if persuasive effects found on immediate post-campaign measurement persist over time, at the individual and community levels. It also describes the data necessary to inform the development of effective substance use prevention campaigns in the home context.

UPC 56: Applications to Practice

This course provides an opportunity for the application of knowledge acquired and skills learned in the preceding courses to developing an effective media campaign.