School-Based Alcohol and HIV Prevention in South Africa

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The proposed project will develop, implement, and evaluate an alcohol and HIV prevention curriculum and school-based small media campaign for teens in public schools in South Africa. The curriculum will be based in part on the "Amazing Alternatives" alcohol prevention curriculum, designed as part of Project Northland and evaluated to be successful at delaying the initiation of alcohol use of both in U.S. and in several developing countries, including Swaziland. The curriculum will also be based in part on the "Modified Reducing the Risk" curriculum, a skills-based HIV and pregnancy prevention curriculum, adapted to be more interactive and successful with high sensation seekers and impulsive decision-makers, and evaluated to be successful at delaying the initiation of sexual activity in multiple U.S. samples of students. The small media campaign will be focused in the students' schools and will continue themes developed in the curriculum, using posters, games and contests, comic books and newspapers, videos, and other media determined to be most likely to succeed in the South African setting. The proposed project draws from and extends our current, exploratory HIV and substance abuse prevention study, now underway in several township secondary schools in KwaZulu-Natal Province, Pietermaritzburg area. During Years 2-5 we will recruit two cohorts of 8th or 9th grade students who will be followed for two school years each. Eight schools will be randomized to the intervention or comparison curriculum conditions; each school will be randomized to receive the small media intervention during the first or second cohort. For each cohort, during the first school year (Years 2 & 4), the alcohol and HIV prevention curriculum will be implemented in intervention curriculum schools; during the second school year (Years 3 & 5), the small media campaign will be implemented in small media schools. With this experimental design, we will assess the effectiveness (including simple and joint effects) of both a new alcohol and HIV prevention curriculum and a school-based small media campaign for South African students. We will also further investigate the relationships among social psychological mediating variables, individual difference variables, and alcohol and sexual risk-taking behaviors.