A Parent-Child Approach to Substance Abuse Prevention for Mexican American Youth

项目总结(见说明)： 这项拟议的研究将实施和测试一项创新的、意义重大的预防计划，将现有的以学校为基础的家长计划与青年预防干预整合为一种新的以社区为基础的方法，以防止正在适应墨西哥传统文化的青年使用药物。这项研究应用生态发展的方法来加强家庭功能，减少青少年的文化适应压力，并提高青少年拒绝毒品的技能。这项干预措施将防止青少年使用毒品作为缩小健康差距的一种手段。指导性假设是，通过在以社区为基础的环境中同步这两种干预措施，干预将产生更强的青少年和家长预期的结果，并将更具成本效益。这一假设将通过一项随机对照试验(RCT)在社区环境中进行验证，对象是难以接触到的、服务不足和脆弱的拉丁裔(主要是墨西哥血统)家庭。RCT将比较1)一致的亲子干预，2)仅限父母的干预；3)对照(照常治疗)。这项研究将测试该计划有效性的假设中介变量(例如，家庭功能、育儿技能和社会支持)和调节变量(文化适应和文化适应压力)。这些发现将增加关于可持续和有效的基于社区的预防的知识，以及关于克服西南部和国家不断变化的社会和学校环境中存在的预防障碍的具体方法。

PROJECT SUMMARY (See instructions): The proposed study will implement and test an innovative and highly significant prevention program by integrating an existing school-based parent program with a youth prevention intervention into a new community-based approach to prevent substance use among acculturating Mexican heritage youth. This research applies the ecodevelopmental approach to strengthen family functioning, reduce youth's acculturative stress, and increase youth drug refusal skills. The intervention will prevent youth substance use as a means of reducing health disparities. The guiding hypothesis is that by synchronizing the two interventions in a community-based setting, the intervention will yield stronger youth and parent desired outcomes and will be more cost-effective. This hypothesis will be tested through a randomized control trial (RCT) in a community-based setting with hard-to-reach, underserved and vulnerable Latino (mostly of Mexican heritage) families. The RCT will compare 1) The aligned Parent-Youth intervention, with 2) The Parent-Only intervention; and 3) Control (treatment as usual). The study will test hypothesized mediators (e.g., family functioning, parenting skills and social support) and moderators (acculturation and acculturative stress) of the effectiveness of the program. The findings will increase knowledge about sustainable and efficacious community-based prevention and about specific approaches to overcome barriers to prevention that are present in the changing social and school environments of the Southwest and the nation.