The PROSPER (PROmoting School-community-university Partnerships to Enhance Resilience) model for disseminating substance use prevention is not a set programme but a way of engaging and supporting communities to (hopefully sustainably) implement the programmes they choose. It uses the leverage afforded by the existing infrastructure in US states of cooperative extension systems [offering non-formal educational programmes to help people use research-based knowledge to improve their lives] run by land grant universities [founded to extend higher education to broad segments of the US population].

Key points from summary and commentary:
In small rural US communities, the PROSPER trial tested a method for implementing family- and school-based substance use prevention programmes for adolescents in which the communities themselves to take primary responsibility.

Researchers on this major trial saw its findings as indicative of robust preventive impacts, showing the PROSPER model had the potential for improving public health.

Main questions over the findings are whether they would be replicated outside the type of communities recruited to the study, and whether even in these communities they really were a “robust” demonstration of the effectiveness of the PROSPER model