Prevention As Corporate Social Responsibility: The Case of Substance Abuse Prevention

Introduction: Prevention programs should be addressed by engaging all strata of society in dialogue and collaboration. However, efforts to engage the business community in these collaborations have been only marginally effective. Especially in the case of stigmatized issues such as substance abuse, companies are typically involved only to the extent that their products compel them to be. In a collaboration between researchers in the U.S. and Hungary, this study examines obstacles to business participation and how embedding prevention within the framework of corporate social responsibility (CSR) could increase strategic participation in general and in the case of stigmatized topics in particular.

Methods: Focus group discussions; in-depth interviews with company managers, government officials and both Hungarian and international stakeholders; comprehensive literature review and analyses of publicly available documents of Anglo-Saxon and Continental European companies.

Results: Public sector initiatives often employ a narrow approach and consider business entities merely as employers who provide workplace environments where prevention programs can run. Such an approach makes it difficult to reach strategic involvement of companies. All forms of business organizations should consider the mental and physical wellness of their workforce strategically and implement workplace prevention programs through their CSR activities. Moreover, particular industries and organizations can be strategically involved in prevention, by expanding efforts to those voluntary business initiatives that allocate financial or other forms of support to solve social problems, addressing not only the workforce, but also other stakeholders as the families of the workers, the local community, or other members of society.

In addition, research both in the U.S. and Europe has shown that business organizations often avoid any connection between their brands and certain issues due to the stigma that is attached to those topics. By rebranding these uncomfortable issues (including substance abuse) as part of a broader health promotion campaign (e.g. stress management), the stigmatized issue can successfully be subsumed within tested, attractive, business friendly framework.

Conclusions: The study concludes that CSR offers a framework to achieve strategic business involvement in prevention. However, a different perception of the role of the business sector and a new set of negotiations among company managers, government officials and other stakeholders are necessary to make the involvement viable.