Brief Integrative Alcohol Interventions for Adolescents
Brief Integrative Alcohol Interventions for Adolescents
The primary aim of this research is to test the efficacy of innovative, brief alcohol abuse prevention strategies that integrate positive youth development messages and health risk messages for adolescents in high school settings. A secondary aim is to examine these strategies in various combinations as interventions and re-interventions (i.e., boosters) for sustaining or enhancing behavior change over time. These strategies are founded upon an emerging conceptual framework titled the Behavior-Image Model emanating from findings of our recent trials examining multiple behavior health interventions. The long-term objective of this project is to reduce alcohol abuse and problems among older high-risk adolescents for whom alcohol and drug use disparities exist, yet who are often overlooked in prevention research and services.
A total of 921 adolescents from two diverse high schools in northeast Florida were randomized to receive either the: 1) in-person consult, 2) parent-youth letter, 3) adolescent newsletter, or 4) standard care control . Three-month, one-year and 18-month follow-ups are planned, with interventions to be implemented in rotating fashion as re-interventions immediately after three-month and one-year data collections. Plans for following year include the following: 1) collecting and analyzing 3-month post-intervention data to determine the effects of the initial consult, parent-youth and adolescent print strategies, intervention costs, and assess possible mediators and moderators of outcomes; 2) implementing the first round of re-interventions; 3) collecting and analyzing one-year post-baseline effects of re-interventions, determining costs and cost-effectiveness of the interventions/re-interventions, and assessing possible mediators and moderators of outcomes; and 4) implementing the second round of re-interventions.
Inclusion Criteria:
Exclusion Criteria: