Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug and Violence Prevention

The U.S. Department of Education’s Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse and Violence Prevention, established in 1993, is funded by the U.S. Department of Education. Its primary role is to prevent excessive alcohol consumption, illegal drug use and violence within higher education establishments. According to the centre's mission statement:

The mission of the U.S. Department of Education’s Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse and Violence Prevention is to assist institutions of higher education in developing, implementing, and evaluating alcohol, other drug, and violence prevention policies and programs that will foster students’ academic and social development and promote campus and community safety.

Social Norms Marketing

Social Norms Marketing is currently being supported by the centre, a strategy increasingly endorsed by the alcohol industry (see The American based National Social Norms Institute.The approach is basically a marketing strategy applied to social settings. The idea behind it, according to the US Department of Education's Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug and Violence Prevention:

Social norms marketing (SNM) differs from traditional prevention approaches that identify problem behaviors and educate target audiences about their harm. Instead of identifying problems, SNM messages contain statistics about the nonproblem behavior of a majority of people in order to encourage that behavior in others. SNM broadcasts nonjudgmental messages about the behaviors of a majority of a well-identified target audience—for campus campaigns, for example, the audience is students attending a college or university. And, instead of using presentations, articles, and brochures, SNM uses mass media such as ads, posters, and flyers.