Prevention Initiatives

Building Prevention Information Capacity

In keeping with SAR Prevention enabling strategies, the Interdepartmental SAR Prevention Working Group has undertaken a project to enhance the federal SAR community's prevention information capacity. The Building Prevention Information Capacity project (BPIC) has conducted a situational analysis of data and information resources including - raw incident data to monitor trends, rates, causal factors and circumstances; and prevention related social research, literature and evaluations to guide SAR decision-making and planning. This project is the first phase of a long term strategy to strengthen the capacity of the federal SAR departments and it may provide an ideal opportunity to extend the efforts of the SAR Prevention Working Group to a variety of SAR prevention practitioners. The promulgation of prevention information will not eliminate the occurrences of SAR responses, but effective prevention policy and projects will provide individuals with the opportunity to educate them before any recreational adventure.

Best Practices

Since the creation of the Prevention Working Group in 1998, there have been annual best practice evaluations to share, with the SAR community and among the federal SAR prevention practitioners, the elements and criteria that have made prevention programs and activities successful. The best practice initiative, undertaken by the NSS, involves an annual analysis of prevention materials, such as videos, brochures, posters and CD-ROMs, from both the SAR and non-SAR community.

Best Practices can be described as

"the processes, practices, and systems identified in public and private organizations that perform exceptionally well and are widely recognized as improving an organization's performance and efficiency in specific areas. A successful recommendation strategy that encourages change gives organizations a 'basket of ideas' from which to choose and adapt to their unique operations".

Building on the best practice methodology developed through the Prevention Review, ongoing analysis will enable the Prevention Working Group to identify the most current and effective techniques for planning, implementing, and evaluating SAR Prevention activities. As Michael Manfredo states in his book, Influencing Human Behavior, "the more land managers know about the factors influencing a decision to perform or not perform a given behavior (e.g. wearing a life vest), a class of behaviors (practicing water safety), or the factors underlying public support for or opposition to policies or issues (public support for new water safety rules), the more likely their ability to develop effective messages or other types of interventions to influence these decisions or positions."

Best Practice analysis identifies the elements and criteria that have been successful in prevention programs and activities and provides the opportunity for the Working Group Members to share lesson learned. In addition, it provides an indication of how successful the projects have been, at a minimal level, as being a change in attitude, and at a maximum level, as being a change in behaviour. The ultimate goal of SAR prevention is to reduce the amount of loss of life and to mitigate the risks involved in recreational activities.

SAR Prevention Best Practice Elements/Criteria

The key components of best practice evaluations are the elements/criteria that are used to conduct the analysis. The following fourteen elements were developed as part of the 1997 SAR Prevention Review and are separated into three categories: Design, Delivery, and Evidence of Success.

Design Phase

Needs - basing a prevention program on real specific needs, e.g. through community planning thereby addressing the real and expressed prevention needs of the community being served.

Audience - addressing clearly defined audiences. This is usually expressed as a statement of intended sub-population for each prevention service being offered.

Cultural Competency - identifying cultural competency thereby tailoring messages to a specific audience and its needs. Messages should be sensitive to the particular culture of the audience, appropriate to the developmental status of the audience, and linguistically specific.

Objectives - setting clearly defined objectives and interventions for each prevention service being offered, process (delivery) and outcome (behavioural) objectives and specifying interventions and their components.

Research - consulting literature in behavioural and social science theory and research relevant to changing risk-behaviours.

Formative Evaluation - conducting a formative evaluation in order to assess the communications medium that works best for the audience to be targeted. In order to assess the relative effectiveness of different program options, randomized experiments can be used to test the effects of different communications mediums.

Evaluation Plan - formulating and including an evaluation plan with defined expected results and measurement mechanisms.

Resources - securing sufficient resources in order to accomplish task(s) as intended. This may include seeking alternate resources, i.e. sponsorships.

Delivery Phase

Degree of Risk - effectively portraying the nature and the degree of risk associated with the activities at hand, and the consequences of unsafe practices the offering possible solutions. These types of messages are clear and to the point.

Call-to-Action - using Call-to-action programs (action-based campaigns whereby clients actively participate in safety promotion activities), or programs involving personal interaction with audience.

Distribution - ensuring wide message distribution. This may entail using alternate delivery mechanisms such as the formation of partnerships.

Process Evaluation - conducting a process evaluation in order to ensure the adherence to plans and quality monitoring.

Monitoring - making use of evaluation findings and mid-course corrections. Programs should be monitored to see if the stated objectives are being approached. If not, outcome objectives should be re-checked for reasonableness and/or mid-course corrections should be made to the program itself.

Evidence of Success Phase

Impact Evaluation - conducting an impact evaluation in order to assess whether the desired results at the level of the objective have been reached. This involves evaluating the audiences' response in terms of attitudinal impact achieved e.g. surveys of knowledge and attitude change, pre-test and post-test measurement, control groups, focus groups, etc.

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