COMMUNITY INTERVENTION TRIAL TO PREVENT YOUTH DRUG USE

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The proposed project is a randomized control trial of a community intervention to prevent youth drug use. The project compares a community-based intervention that includes a school-based prevention program to a school-based intervention alone, using 16 small communities that are matched and then randomly assigned to condition. The proposed project will augment and extend a community intervention project designed to prevent youth tobacco use, which is already funded by the National Cancer Institute. It will expand the focus of the NCI tobacco-oriented community-based intervention to include activities directed at the mobilization of community leaders and organizations to modify the social conditions which influence youth to use other drugs. Available research strongly supports the proposition that substantial reductions in the prevalence of drug use cannot be achieved without widespread changes in parenting skills and schooling practices. Such changes in turn require the mobilization of elements of the community which have traditionally not been involved in affecting child-rearing practices. The proposed intervention would augment the membership and focus of the community board and task forces to be created in the NCI community intervention. In addition, the project would restructure and expand the task forces on (a) parenting, (b) media, (c) screening/ recruitment of high risk youth, and (d) modification of the community environment to focus on the community-wide reduction of risk factors for youth drug use. This project would create two additional task forces in each community--one to implement more effective risk reduction practices in schools and one to improve community support of high risk youth and their families. A particular strength of this proposal is that a comprehensive evaluation of the effects of the community interventions will be possible because of the already-funded NCI evaluation activities. The intervention effects will be evaluated using cross-sectional and longitudinal assessments of 7th and 9th grade-level youth, as well as through assessments of parenting and teaching practices, and by measuring efforts of community leaders and organizations to affect the social environment for high risk youth and their families. The study will also examine the relationships between aspects of the social context for youth drug use and other targeted problem behaviors. Finally, the project will experimentally evaluate the effect of a parent-training program for high-risk families. This project is expected to be a model for community interventions to prevent youth drug use in small communities.