The major aim of this 5-year intervention research project is to significantly reduce the onset and prevalence of alcohol use and abuse among young adolescents by changing the normative expectations concerning adolescent alcohol use through a multi-component, community-wide program called Alcohol and Kids. The Alcohol and Kids program includes previously-tested peer-led classroom curricula, parental involvement and family skills training and community-wide strategies to reduce alcohol availability for youth and to change normative expectations to alcohol nonuse by young adolescents. Alcohol and Kids is based on a conceptual model that has been developed over a ten-year period by the investigators through studies of alcohol abuse prevention and other health-compromising behaviors of youth including smoking, drug use, and inadequate nutrition and fitness. The Alcohol and Kids program will be tested in 10 randomly-selected Minnesota communities characterized by high rates of alcohol-related problems. These 10 intervention communities will be compared with 10 randomly-selected reference communities from the same area, known as the Iron Range of Minnesota. The educated communities will take part in three years of school-based curricula, parental involvement programs, and community-wide efforts that are targeted at one cohort of adolescents (the Class of 1999), beginning when the cohort is in the sixth grade. The anticipated sample size is approximately 2100 adolescents from the Class of 1999, which includes both the educated and reference communities. Year I of the study period will be spent recruiting and randomly-assigning school districts to educated and reference status, community reconnaissance and staffing, measurement and intervention refinement and development. Baseline assessments take place in the Fall 1991 in all recruited school districts before the interventions are implemented, with follow-up assessments in the Springs of 1992, 1993, and 1994. The reference communities will only get the yearly assessments, with no interventions offered until 1994 when data collection is completed. Process evaluation assessments will be included for the specific program components. Our expected intervention outcome in the educated communities is a normative expectation for adolescent alcohol nonuse among the adolescents, more appropriate modelling by parents, and less tolerance of and access to alcohol in the broader community. Expected behavioral outcomes in the educated communities include a delay in the onset of alcohol use, reduced prevalence of alcohol use, and reduced prevalence of heavy drinking in the cohort, with the overall goal of adolescent alcohol abuse prevention. Finally, we will attempt to determine if the Alcohol and Kids program is effective for the entire cohort, including those who may be at greater risk because of specific environmental, individual, or behavioral attributes.
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