The Handbook of Program Development for Health Behavior Research and Practice guides the reader from program development theory through program activity analysis and selection, immediate impact studies, and intermediate and long-term outcome measurement. The handbook consists of five parts, providing a wealth of information about:
- The history and rationale for engaging in health behavior program development, including a case study that shows how to apply the six-step program development model and ways of surmounting the hurdles to engaging in program development
- The role of theory in program development, the use of assessment studies to fill in gaps in theory regarding what leads to health-related behavior, and many issues and resources relevant to pooling information about prior interventions
- Perceived efficacy (i.e. concept evaluation) methods of activity selection, including verbal and paper-and-pencil methods of selecting potentially useful activities
- Immediate-impact studies of activities and program creation
- Ways to find immediate-outcome measures that predict longer-term outcome measures, and future issues to consider in the arena of health behavior program development.
Each section consists of an overview; one or more commentaries from recognized theorists, researchers, and practitioners in the health field, and case studies that provide guidelines on addressing relevant aspects of program development. These case studies will provide useful information for discussion, research, and application. In all, this handbook provides 20 chapters of detailed and useful information for researchers, academics, public health practitioners, students, policymakers, and those who engage in any aspect of health program development or evaluation.
Dr. Steve Sussman is a professor of preventive medicine and psychology at the University of Southern California. Dr. Sussman conducts research in the prediction, prevention, and cessation of tobacco and other drug abuse and in the utility of empirical program development methods. He is first author on the book Developing School-Based Tobacco Use Prevention and Cessation Programs (1995), based on his previous research in that arena. He is also the editor of Handbook of Program Development for Health Behavior Research and Practice (2001), a leading text in this arena, and he is the lead author on the upcoming text The Social Psychology of Drug Abuse (with Susan L. Ames; September, 2001). He was the principal investigator of Project Towards No Tobacco Use (Project TNT). Project TNT is a tobacco use prevention and cessation project among young teens, which is being disseminated nationally by the Centers for Disease Control as a "Program That Works" and by the Centers for Substance Abuse Prevention as a model program. It is also recognized as a model program by the Department of Education of the State of California, Sociometrics Inc, and by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Recently this project also became recognized as an exemplary program by the U.S. Department of Education. His other projects include Project EX, a successful adolescent tobacco-use cessation program which was tested through use of a large, true field experimental design, and Project Towards No Drug Abuse (Project TND), which is a drug abuse prevention project for older teens, particularly for those at risk for drug abuse. Project TND is now considered a model program by the Centers for Substance Abuse Prevention, Health Canada, Sociometrics Inc, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse. He has published over 160 articles, chapters, or books in the arena of drug use and abuse.
