An Adaptation of Project Northland for Urban Youth

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DESCRIPTION (Provided by Applicant): The goal of this research project is to adapt, enhance, implement, and evaluate Project Northland in racially diverse and economically disadvantaged urban neighborhoods of Chicago. Project Northland is a multi-component intervention, including three years of behavioral curricula, family interventions, youth-planned extracurricular activities, and community organizing. Project Northland, recommended as a model program by the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention and the U.S. Department of Education, has been rigorously evaluated in a ten-year randomized trial in 28 communities in northeastern Minnesota with a primary middle- to low-income, rural and white population. Because of the positive significant outcomes achieved, and the substantial interest in replicating Project Northland in other parts of the country, it is particularly critical and timely to evaluate the effects of Project Northland in urban communities. Moreover, research in this area has progressed since the end of the first phase of the original Northland trial in 1994. In addition to the cultural adaptations needed for an urban, multiethnic group setting, it is also important to enhance the original strategies, particularly those outside of the classroom setting. Therefore, the design of the Urban Project Northland intervention will also build on recent results from other large-scale randomized trials on youth alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use at the University of Minnesota conducted by the investigators. The design proposed is a randomized community trial that will evaluate an adapted and enhanced Project Northland in 10 intervention and 10 control units (schools and surrounding neighborhoods) with sizable African American and Hispanic populations in the Chicago metropolitan area. Schools from the Chicago public school district will be recruited, matched, and randomly assigned to intervention or control condition. A community advisory committee of key stakeholders in Chicago will help to guide the adaptation process. The design involves one pretest (end of 5th grade before the Urban Project Northland intervention activities begin) and three posttests (at the end of 6th, 7th, and 8th grade interventions). Outcomes will be measured via student, parent, and neighborhood-institution surveys; alcohol purchase attempts; and archival data. Process measures will assess teacher compliance and feedback; peer, parental, and community participation; and organizers' activities. Results will be analyzed using mixed-model regression methods and multi-level growth curve analyses. In addition, key conceptual and content areas of the Urban Project Northland intervention will be identified that are associated with reductions in alcohol use using mediation analysis.