Moving prevention from the fringes into the fabric of school improvement

If prevention initiatives are to get beyond their current marginalized and fragmented status, they must be framed in a comprehensive context. This article places primary prevention at one end of a comprehensive continuum of interventions and explores the continuum in terms of a component for addressing barriers to development and learning. Such a component is conceptualized as primary and essential to successful school reform. Current concerns and emerging trends related to policy, research, practice, and training are highlighted, and general implications for systemic changes are suggested.