By Anthea Jirgens, Director of Strategic Engagement, OurFutures Institute
When it comes to protecting young people from harm, good intentions matter. But good intentions alone don’t necessarily translate into tangible, measurable differences in young people’s lives.
Australia has no shortage of organisations working to improve the health and wellbeing of young people, and schools are willing to make time for prevention education. The challenge is ensuring the programs being delivered are proven to equip young people with the knowledge, skills and confidence to make safer choices.
For governments, philanthropic organisations and other funding bodies investing in youth drug and alcohol prevention, this raises an important question: how do we know a program actually works?
Engagement is important, but it isn’t the same as impact
High participation, strong completion rates and positive feedback are all valuable measures. They tell us whether a program reached young people, whether students engaged with it and whether it was delivered as intended.
What these measures don’t necessarily tell us is whether anything changed as a result.
Did students gain knowledge? Did their attitudes change? Did they develop skills that helped them navigate real-life situations? And, importantly, did the program ultimately contribute to reducing behaviours that can lead to harm?
This distinction between engagement and impact is critical when deciding where limited prevention funding should be invested.
Why rigorous evaluation matters
Pre- and post-program measures can help demonstrate whether knowledge and attitudes have changed following an intervention. Longer-term follow-ups can establish whether those changes last, while appropriate randomised controlled trials can provide stronger evidence that an intervention contributed to the outcomes observed.
Not every prevention program needs to begin with a clinical trial. But programs receiving public or philanthropic investment should have a meaningful way of demonstrating their impact.
Evaluation shouldn’t simply be an exercise in reporting. It should help us understand what works, for whom, and whether an intervention is creating meaningful and lasting change.
Building an evidence base over 20 years
At OurFutures Institute, evidence is central to how our prevention programs are developed and evaluated.
Our evidence base for reducing young people’s alcohol and drug use includes 11 clinical trials involving more than 29,000 students across more than 320 schools, spanning 20 years.
OurFutures programs have now been delivered to more than 150,000 students, with a 90% return rate from schools that have delivered the programs.
Across the OurFutures portfolio, programs have demonstrated reductions in vaping, binge drinking, alcohol-related harms, cannabis and MDMA use, alongside improvements in mental health and psychological wellbeing. Some beneficial effects have been demonstrated for up to seven years. Our Alcohol & Cannabis program, for example, has demonstrated reduced alcohol-related harms, binge drinking and hazardous alcohol use up to seven years later.
Evidence in action: preventing youth vaping
The OurFutures Vaping Prevention Program demonstrates what can be achieved when prevention is designed around evidence.
Co-designed with educators and students alongside researchers from the University of Sydney’s Matilda Centre for Research in Mental Health and Substance Use, the program was evaluated through a cluster randomised controlled trial across Australian schools.
Students who received the program were 65% less likely to vape at the 12-month follow-up.
In 2026, this work was recognised nationally when the OurFutures Vaping Prevention Program was awarded the UNSW Eureka Prize for Societal Impact in Science.
Recognition is important, but what matters most is what sits behind it: evidence that prevention education can make a measurable difference to young people.
Investing in what works
For governments and other funding bodies, evidence provides confidence that limited resources are being directed towards programs capable of delivering meaningful outcomes.
Clear evidence standards, meaningful outcome measurement and investment in programs that have been rigorously evaluated and can be delivered consistently at scale can help strengthen youth prevention in Australia.
This approach helps protect public and philanthropic investment and builds confidence among schools, educators and communities.
Most importantly, it helps ensure young people receive prevention education that has been shown to make a difference — giving them the knowledge and skills to make safer, healthier choices when they need them most.
Anthea Jirgens is Director of Strategic Engagement at OurFutures Institute. OurFutures develops and delivers evidence-based drug, alcohol, mental health and health education programs for high school students.
