Toward a technology in primary prevention: Educational strategies and tactics.

The coming major task of primary prevention is to inform people about what works, what will prevent problems and promote desired potentials. This will be the task of educational technology, converying those tested packages of effective methods for achieving specified social ends. This paper explores the nature of this preventive/promotive technology. Examples of primary prevention programs illustrating the various issues in such a technology are given. A model for educational technology is provided: the application of systematic procedures that can be employed in concert to affect factors which prevent predictable problems, protect current healthy functioning, and/or promote desired potentials.