Drug Use and Abuse

As you gather information you will enjoy a lot of the work, it will be rewarding to you to learn and process much of the different types of programs that you interview and visit. It will be rewarding especially when you see programs that are truly making a definable difference in their community.

Taking the information and producing the report for your group is the next step in the process. It is one that deals with designing, writing and constructing the report and deciding what information to include, and how to present it. Remember your goal is to talk about your own idea of how to implement one of the types of successful Drug Treatment Centers

Is it an indicator only report? If so, then the primary focus and consideration will be format. Is your report going to be a City profile that is comprehensive? Then it will be more of a report that serves to give a narrative, to relate a snapshot of your community, and the situations, objectives, goals and spirit of what is happening locally in your community, and the trends.

You should take into account your goals, the goals that your group has, and the audience you produce your city profile report for. Building one of the different Drug Treatment Centers will take support from different groups in your community.

Each of the chapters in your report can take the approach to present key descriptions and findings, to show what is happening by topic. Then you can follow each topic, such as Drug Use by Youth, Health Issues, Crime Related to Drug Usage, or whatever your topic is by more descriptive information.

You can follow up and talk about the things that are in the community or city that you live in that are working, or programs that are very promising. This is a good way to build and establish rapport with the target audience, and a good way to begin your approach with your own findings. If there are good Drug Treatment Centers operating in your area- Name Them. It builds on your ideas to acknowledge the programs that are working in your area.

Making Recommendations- As you progress through your report, you can begin to introduce your own recommendations and the findings that your group has come up with. This is a great way to slowly build up to what you are trying to say. You have already worked to build some rapport, now you begin to share information that will help push the initiative or issue that you wish to try to share.

Realistic, realistic, realistic- As you share your recommendations, its very important to know that you should focus on goals and detail objectives that stay realistic. Rome was not built in a day, and knowing how to gain support toward building one of the different types of Drug Treatment Centers does not happen overnight either.

Numbers Mean Power- Talk about trends, list data, and give statistics that support and help define the problem, as well as listing numbers that give support to your ideas.

Finally, be bold but be pragmatic. Sometimes communities are resistant to new ideas, and need to be coaxed into cooperation. Creating effective Drug Treatment Centers take time and it can be a daunting experience. It can be a hard road, but one that can be successful in time.