The Next Frontier: Prevention as an Instrument of Social Justice

Abstract

Preventive interventions that reduce oppressive societal structures, change attitudes that contribute to oppression, and enhance individual, family, and community strengths that empower persons to resist oppression represent important vehicles for advancing social justice. Social justice prevention is informed by the work of George Albee, in conjunction with ecological theory, positive psychology, the emancipatory communitarian framework, and multiculturalism. This manuscript describes the convergence of these influences in defining a social justice approach to prevention that integrates concerns relevant to context, strengths, culture, and power differentials, and evaluates social justice prevention as represented in current prevention literature.