Drug Prevention for Children in After-School and Community Settings

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): The goal of this Phase I SBIR project is to develop and establish the feasibility of an evidence-based drug abuse prevention program for use with late elementary school-aged children (8-11) in community and after-school settings. Activities will be designed to 1) reinforce beliefs that drug use and other related delinquent behaviors are both rare and unacceptable, 2) provide youth with a framework to begin thinking about positive futures, 3) reinforce perceptions that high-risk behaviors do not fit with desired futures, 4) provide facilitators with a behavior management strategy that provides youth with a forum to understand how to get along with each other and promotes decreased social misbehavior, and 5) promote bonding to parents and reinforce concepts via parent/guardian centered take-home activities. Program development will be informed by organization feedback about needs and resources. A panel of program facilitators will review the curriculum for content and feasibility. A revised curriculum will then be evaluated for feasibility with a randomized pre-test post-test design. Data collected during the feasibility trial will include feedback from facilitators regarding appropriateness and ease of use, feedback from youth regarding program engagement and enjoyment, and data from youth concerning normative beliefs, lifestyle incongruence, social interaction, and bonding. The reduction of drug use among our nation's youth remains a top priority and early intervention is an important strategy for addressing this issue. Several programs delivered in school settings have demonstrated effectiveness with preadolescent youth, but there are few programs specifically designed for use in community organizations and after-school programs. The All Stars Jr. community-based drug prevention program will fill a void that currently exists in the field of drug prevention programming by providing community agencies with a science-based program to implement with children ages 8 to 11.