Blueprint for Action: Preventing substance-related harms among youth through a Comprehensive School Health approach
The Public Health Agency of Canada developed The Blueprint for Action: Preventing substance-related harms among youth through a Comprehensive School Approach with a policy paper.
These new resources for preventing substance-related harms among youth are now available for administrators, school board officials, teachers, guidance counsellors, healthcare professionals and community organizations that support youth.
The Blueprint combines evidence-based prevention and intervention approaches with the Comprehensive School Health framework, an internationally recognized approach to building healthy school communities. It includes Resources page, Summary and Interactive webpage.
The primary audience for this resource is members of Canadian school communities. The secondary audience for this resource is the broader array of Canadian school stakeholders.
This resource has been developed with three main purposes:
- To inform strategies that prevent substance-related harms in youth at various levels of the Canadian education system
- To call for school communities to think differently about how they approach youth substance use
- To support school stakeholders in engaging their networks, communities and governments for increased attention, buy-in and resources for comprehensive approaches, that are planned, integrated and holistic, for preventing substance-related harms among youth
Interactive training workshops to help school community members implement the Blueprint locally are offered through a partnership with PHAC and the Students Commission of Canada.
The Blueprint and policy paper were informed by work done at the School Matters: Building a Blueprint for Action for School Communities to Help Prevent Substance Use Harms forum. Organized by PHAC, it was co-hosted with the Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, Canadian Students for Sensible Drug Policy and Joint Consortium for School Health.
