Risk Reduction

Effective Interventions Through Effective NMRD Programs – NMRD employs what is commonly referred to as the Risk Reduction Model of violence prevention. The model was created from the work of J. David Hawkins & Richard Catelano. These men looked at 50 years of research in developing a program called Communities That Care (CTC) which belongs to the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) in the office of the United States Government's Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). CTC is a coalition-based prevention operating system that uses a public health approach to prevent youth problem behaviors such as violence, delinquency, school dropout and substance abuse. The focus is on strengthening protective factors (wrap around services) that can buffer young people from problem behaviors and promote positive youth development. 

This Risk Reduction approach to addressing negative behaviors uses effective programs that are designed to impact the participant’s attitudes that lead to bad choices. Any youth that is in a diversion program and/or recently released from custody has to have an opportunity to really start fresh. That means that the aftercare following the initial diversion processes has to replace old street successes with new opportunity and chances to succeed. We think our program package does that.