The Core Course is composed of 10 modules representing different aspects of prevention science and its application to practice. It is designed to give participants a foundation in the knowledge and skills needed to undertake evidence-based prevention programming at the community level.
The course provides an overview of the basic processes that underlie addiction and the brain, basic pharmacology of psychoactive substances, and preventive mechanisms that have been found to be effective in more than 30 years of prevention science. It also provides skills-building in areas such as reviewing data needed to assess the substance use problem; working with a prevention implementation planning approach; and developing logic models to assist in that planning. It is required as a pre-requisite for participation in the specialty tracks. Each of the specialty tracks is self-contained but it is necessary to take the CORE first as an introduction to the training series.