Preventing Substance Use and Risky Behavior Among Rural African American Youth

描述（由申请人提供）：谁将参加拟议的研究计划的家庭生活在小城镇和社区在农村格鲁吉亚，其中贫困率是全国最高的，失业率高于全国平均水平。因此，格鲁吉亚农村的许多非裔美国人家庭生活在长期的经济和环境压力中，这可能会对青少年造成影响。最近的流行病学数据表明，农村地区的非洲裔美国青年使用药物和从事高风险性活动的比率等于或超过居住在人口稠密的内城的青年。这些高风险行为预示着艾滋病毒和其他性传播感染、青少年父母、辍学、参与刑事司法系统以及成年期的药物使用。目前，没有发展和文化上适当的预防方案已经制定，以阻止物质使用和高风险的性行为之间的数百万非洲裔美国青少年谁住在南方农村。为了满足这一公共卫生需求，来自格鲁吉亚大学的Brody和Murry博士以及来自埃默里大学的DiClemente和Wingood博士设计并开发了强大的非裔美国家庭高中计划（SAAF-HS）。在这项申请中，要求提供资金，以评估这一多方面的、以家庭为中心的预防方案。干预的交付是仿照布罗迪和默里的强大的非裔美国人家庭计划（SAAF），一个有效的预防性干预农村非裔美国人前青少年。该方案包括七次每周会议，其中包括青少年及其父母的单独会议，然后是家庭会议，在家庭会议上，青少年和父母相互交流，应用他们在单独会议上学到的技能。样本将包括572个家庭与10年级的学生，其中一半将被随机分配到SAAF-HS计划，其中一半将被分配到注意力控制组。将从整个样本中收集青少年物质使用和高风险性行为的干预前、干预后和长期随访评估。

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The families who will participate in the proposed research program live in small towns and communities in rural Georgia, in which poverty rates are among the highest in the nation and unemployment rates are above the national average. Many African American families in rural Georgia thus live with chronic economic and contextual stress that can take a toll on adolescents. Recent epidemiologic data indicate that African American youth in rural areas use substances and engage in high-risk sexual activity at rates equal to or exceeding those of youth living in densely populated inner cities. These high-risk behaviors forecast HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, adolescent parenthood, school dropout, involvement with the criminal justice system, and substance use during adulthood. Currently, no developmental and culturally appropriate prevention programs have been developed to deter substance use and high-risk sexual behavior among the several million African American adolescents who live in the rural South. To address this public health need, Drs. Brody and Murry from the University of Georgia and Drs. DiClemente and Wingood from Emory University designed and developed the Strong African American Families-High School program (SAAF-HS). In this application, funding is requested for evaluating this multicomponent, family-centered prevention program. The intervention's delivery is modeled after Brody and Murry's Strong African American Families Program (SAAF), an efficacious preventive intervention for rural African American preadolescents. The program consists of seven weekly meetings that include separate sessions for adolescents and their parents, followed by family sessions in which youth and parents interact with each other to apply the skills they learned in their separate sessions. The sample will consist of 572 families with a 10th-grade student, half of whom will be assigned randomly to the SAAF-HS program and half of whom will be assigned to an attention-control group. Pre-intervention, post-intervention, and long-term follow-up assessments of adolescents' substance use and high risk sexual behavior will be gathered from the entire sample.