Community Action Plan for Adolescent Substance Use Prevention: The First Step to Creating a Community Participatory Action

Background: The study was designed to explore and catalyze the development of action plan for adolescent substance use prevention in a rural community in Ebonyi State, Nigeria. Methodology: This study adopted a two-phase multi-method design. The first phase was a quantitative assessment that determined the real-life situation of adolescents’ substance use in the community using 417 respondents. Contemporaneously, the second qualitative phase focused on the development of an action plan by community stakeholders for adolescent substance use prevention using thirty (30) participants selected through purposive sampling. The reliability of the instrument for quantitative data was established using a test re-test method and computed using Pearson moment correlation. A coefficient of 0.8 was obtained. Validity was established for both quantitative and qualitative instruments. The generated data were subjected to descriptive statistics whereas the qualitative data from respondents’ narratives were analysed thematically. Result: The data revealed that participants who have ever used substances consisted of 128 (59.5%) males and 87 (40.5%) females. The findings on the opinion of 30 participants interviewed about the consequences of substance use brought out majorly four consequences of substance use. The result of catalysing the involvement of community residents towards developing community action for adolescent substance use showed that the challenges associated with adolescents’ substance use as identified by the participants were discussed under one theme—living with the cause and three elements. Conclusion: Substance use prevention policies and plans in the local community have strong potential for stimulating local adolescent substance use prevention actions.