Environmental Approaches to Prevention

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DESCRIPTION (Provided by the applicant): The Prevention Research Center (PRC) is one of 18 national alcohol research centers sponsored by NIAAA and the only one specializing in community prevention. The primary objective of PRC is to conduct basic and applied research leading to the development of effective prevention programs to reduce alcohol abuse and related problems. Research at the Center focuses on (1) developing a better understanding of the psychosocial, economic and ecological determinants of individual problem behaviors related to alcohol and (2) designing, implementing and evaluating effective prevention polices and programs. The Center consists of a Core administrative and technical component, 4 research components, and 1 educational component. Component 1 - "Administrative Core" - provides administrative and technical support for the center components and other individual research grants, and includes a portion of the time of the Principal Investigator/Scientific Director, GIS Specialist, Computer Systems Administrator, Librarian, and Administrative Associate. The Principal Investigator oversees management of the Center and (via the core) insures overall scientific integrity of all research conducted at PRC. Component 2 - "The Social Ecology of Drinking and Driving: A Two Population Model" studies the social mechanisms relating drinking contexts to drunken driving. Component 3 - "Neighborhoods, Alcohol Outlets and Intimate Partner Violence" examines how alcohol outlets and neighborhood factors moderate violence among couples. Component 4 - "Social Mechanisms of Child Physical Abuse and Neglect" considers how parents' use of drinking places affects rates of child abuse and neglect. Component 5 - "Local Alcohol Policies, Enforcement, and Underage Drinking" examines how community variations in alcohol policies and enforcement affect underage drinking trajectories. Component 6 - Dissemination and Adoption of Science-Based Prevention" disseminates the results of the Center's research activities to support the adoption of science-based prevention at all intervention levels with emphasis in the current application upon community-specific activities. Emphasizing the development of new ecological approaches to the prevention of alcohol problems at the community level, these highly integrated research activities will be supported by large-scale archival and telephone survey data acquisition systems collecting coordinated data across 50 cities in California.