Crossroads: Cooperative High School Drug Prevention

DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Drug abuse among adolescents remains a serious public health problem. Efforts to reduce drug abuse and the associated consequences have been made by most elementary and middle schools. In contrast, there is a dearth of research-based programs for high schools. This project capitalizes on the latest research to create a drug prevention program targeting students in high school health classes. The primary goal of this project is to demonstrate the feasibility of developing an effective high school drug prevention program that will be useful to health teachers, students and parents. The University of North Carolina at Wilmington and Tanglewood Research will collaborate on this Phase I STTR project. A Crossroads Prevention Center will be created at UNC Wilmington. The Crossroads Prevention Center will form a cooperative relationship with health teachers and peer educators at participating high schools to prevent drug use among students. Initial tasks to be completed include: (1) develop an online infrastructure to organize and deliver program information as well as facilitate participant communication and (2) develop four classroom presentations for students targeting normative beliefs, beliefs about consequences, resistance skills and decision making skills. Once these developmental tasks are completed, a pilot study will be conducted. Approximately 500 students will be randomly assigned by school to the treatment or control group. The results of this study will inform us about the feasibility of using a remote center to guide the delivery of drug prevention at the high school level. This study will also inform us of the program's potential to produce positive change in targeted mediating variables and drug-related behaviors.