Preventing Substance Use and Risky Behavior Among Rural African American Youth

将参加拟议研究计划的家庭居住在小城镇和社区， 农村格鲁吉亚，其中贫困率是全国最高的，失业率是 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困难中。 和环境压力会对青少年造成伤害。最近的流行病学数据表明， 美国农村地区的年轻人使用药物和从事高风险性活动的比率等于或 超过了居住在人口稠密的市中心的年轻人。这些高危行为预示着艾滋病毒和 其他性传播感染、未成年父母、辍学、参与犯罪 司法系统，以及成年期的药物使用。目前，在发展和文化方面， 制定了适当的预防方案，以阻止药物使用和高风险性行为。 在数百万生活在南方农村的非洲裔美国青少年中，解决 为了满足这一公共卫生需求，来自格鲁吉亚大学的布罗迪博士和默里博士以及迪克莱门特博士和 埃默里大学的温古德设计并开发了强大的非裔美国家庭-高中 程序（SAAF-HS）。在这项提议中，要求为评价这一多部分提供资金， 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 非洲裔美国人家庭计划（SAAF），一个有效的预防干预，为农村非洲裔美国人 青春期前该计划包括七个每周会议，其中包括单独的会议， 青少年及其父母，然后是家庭会议，其中青年和父母相互交流， 其他人则应用他们在各自的课程中学到的技能。样本将包括572个家庭， 一名10年级的学生，其中一半将被随机分配到SAAF-HS计划，另一半将被分配到 将被分配到注意力控制组干预前、干预后和长期随访 对青少年物质使用和高风险性行为的评估将从整个 sample.

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 proposal, 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 AfricanAmerican 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.