Family Education to Reduce Teen Drinking and Promote Safe Driving

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DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): This developmental study will produce and pilot an innovative family education intervention aimed at reducing teen drinking and promoting safe driver and passenger behaviors. The intervention targets families with youth 15 to 17 years old and capitalizes upon a teachable moment, when teen alcohol experimentation and misuse are on the rise and sons, daughters, and their friends begin getting their licenses. Parents often feel unprepared to provide effective oversight, rule-setting, communication and support to keep their own and other children from misusing alcohol, both in conjunction with driving and in other situations. The proposed audio-CD intervention, When Dangers Become Real: Helping Parents Address Teen Drinking and Driving, will use theoretically driven and empirically informed dramatic, reality-based stories to model positive parenting practices to promote desired adolescent behaviors. The aims are to: (1) Conduct formative research with parents, teens, and community informants to identify prevention messages and develop role model stories for an audio-CD intervention to reduce alcohol use and promote safe driving behaviors among teens, ages 15- 17, and to identify viable distribution channels (e.g., high schools, Department of Motor Vehicles, driver education programs); (2) Collaborate with an award-winning multi-media specialist to develop scripts and produce the intervention, including the audio-CD, CD packaging and accompanying print materials; (3) Pilot test the intervention to assess feasibility, acceptability, and preliminary evidence of effectiveness in a randomized trial of 200 parent-youth dyads, in which half of the families receive the audio-CD intervention and the others serve as attention-controls (receiving routine school/community drinking/driving education plus the NIH pamphlet, A Parent's Guide For the Prevention of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drug Use); [an additional 50 parent-youth dyads will be enrolled to assess outcomes in an "uncontaminated" school setting in which neither intervention nor attention-control materials are distributed]; (4) Conduct baseline and 3-month post-intervention telephone surveys of parents and written surveys of youth to assess drinking, driving, and drinking and driving attitudes, behaviors, and hypothesized parenting mechanisms (e.g., oversight, rule- setting, communication, and support), and ongoing process evaluation of acceptability and feasibility. If the intervention strategy proves promising, the next step would be an efficacy trial. If efficacious, the intervention can be disseminated via multiple channels to reach families when they are likely to be confronting the difficult issues that teen drinking, teen driving, and drinking and driving present. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Public Health Relevance Statement: Teen drinking, teen driving, and the intersections of drinking and driving present myriad challenges to youth, parents, and communities. This study will develop and pilot a brief intervention for parents with teens 15-17 years old, when drinking and driving dangers increase and parents often are less comfortable providing oversight and guidance. If When Dangers Become Real: Helping Parents Address Teen Drinking and Driving is found effective in a subsequent trial, the intervention can be widely disseminated as one component of community efforts to keep adolescents safe and alcohol-free.