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Keeping on Track: Setting Useful Goals for Community-Based Prevention

NCJ Number
139356
Date Published
1991
Length
57 pages
Annotation
This booklet intends to help alcohol-abuse-prevention organizations set and use goals for their prevention efforts.
Abstract
The booklet first demonstrates the benefits that an effective goal-setting procedure will bring to community prevention. These benefits include more effective targeting and coordination of prevention efforts, strengthened commitment among organizational members, improved selection of prevention strategies and activities that will work to accomplish organizational purposes, improved ability to gain resources and support, and enhanced ability to assess and improve progress toward prevention goals. A 3-step process is identified and described for setting goals, identifying program activities appropriate for reaching goals, and developing procedures for keeping the organization on track in achieving those goals. The booklet also describes ways in which an organization can incorporate goal-setting into the organization. The author advises that successful goal-setting must be adapted to the unique purposes, circumstances, and personnel of an organization's prevention effort. The goal-setting process described requires the participation of program decisionmakers and staff if goals are to be accepted and used as guides to program action. The steps described in this booklet will provide program direction only if they are initiated and accepted in a participative, open process. 3 figures