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APHA Scientific Session and Event Listing

Susan W. Hayashi, PhD¹, Lisa S. Kretz, PhD¹, Wendy Parker, MPA¹, Judy Shih, PhD¹, Qing Xie, PhD¹, Manu Singh, PhD¹, N. Andrew Mariotti, MA¹, Erika Olson, MA¹, Timothy P. Condon, PhD², Lucinda L. Miner, PhD³, and Denise Pintello, PhD³. (1) JBS International, Inc., 8630 Fenton Street, 12th Floor, Silver Spring, MD 20910, 301-495-1080, shayashi@jbs1.com, (2) Office of the Director, National Institute on Drug Abuse, 6001 Executive Boulevard, Bethesda, MD 20892, (3) Office of Science Policy and Communications, National Institute on Drug Abuse, 6001 Executive Boulevard, Bethesda, MD 20892

In 2002, The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) implemented a project designed to assess the use and usefulness of selected NIDA public health information publications across seven target audiences. Target audiences included community coalition members/prevention professionals, drug abuse researchers/providers, Native Americans, middle school science/health educators, public health policymakers/officials, and the general public. Diffusion of innovations theory (Rogers, 1995) provided the project framework and the following project objectives guided this effort: (1) to determine the extent to which target audiences are knowledgeable about NIDA's public health information publications; (2) to determine target audiences' attitudes toward NIDA's public health information publications; (3) to determine how target audiences use NIDA's public health information publications; and (4) to learn ways to strengthen the development and dissemination of NIDA's public health information publications to better meet users' needs. Data was collected from 22,605 individuals using qualitative and quantitative methods. Key findings include (1) NIDA is reaching its main constituent audience (i.e., drug abuse researchers/providers) and opportunities exist to build awareness of NIDA's publications with other target audiences, (2) across all target audiences, individuals prefer to download the publications than any other dissemination mode, (3) target audience members are also aware of NIDA's publications not specifically targeted to them, and (4) once target audiences are aware of a publication, they tend to view it as a resource. In addition, results include recommendations for ways NIDA can strengthen the development and dissemination of the publications as well as how results may be generalized to other agencies/organizations.

Learning Objectives: