For many years the challenges facing prevention researchers and public health professionals have been to identify promising approaches, carefully test them, and provide evidence of their effectiveness. That challenge has largely been met.Much is known at this point about the causes of ATOD abuse and how to prevent it. Although more work is needed to refine existing approaches and develop even more effective ones, the challenge facing us now concerns bridging the gap between research and practice. Recognizing this,efforts are underway to disseminate information about effective ATOD abuse prevention approaches and to move from research to action. During the past few years, national conferences conducted by the National Institute on Drug Abuse, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Justice Department’s Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency
Prevention have focused on communicating research results indicating that a small group of prevention approaches, such as the LST program, have worked. Speakers at these conferences have exhorted practitioners to use researchbased approaches