Project Northland II (A Community-Wide Approach to Prevent Adolescent Alcohol Use) is a four-year efficacy trial (1995-1999 with a goal to prevent or reduce the prevalence of alcohol use with adolescents. This is a competitive renewal application, building on Project Northland I (1990-1995), which was successful in delaying and preventing onset among young adolescents. Project Northland I involved 24 school districts and adjoining communities in northeastern Minnesota; half of the communities were randomly assigned to receive four years of intervention (1991- 1995)targeted at the Class of 1998 during their sixth, seventh, eighth, and ninth grades, the time of greatest initiation of first use of alcohol; the other half of the communities were assigned to a reference condition. Project Northland II seeks to maintain the effects of Project Northland I, continuing the same design as Project Northland I, with the same set of intervention and reference school districts and adjoining communities. The Project Northland II intervention targets the Class of 1998 students during their tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades, a time of greater involvement with alcohol in adolescents' social lives with driving, with significant consequences. The intervention involves peer participation program, parental involvement and education, community task force activities, and a behavioral curriculum for high school students. The reference school districts will receive these intervention materials in 1998. Evaluation consists of annual surveys in schools with the Class of 1998 cohort (N=1901) in all 24 schools districts and telephone surveys in 1996 and 1998 with half of the parents of the cohort (N=900). These surveys continue those that have been ongoing since 1991. Tracking of students who are lost-to-follow-up after 1994 will be done in 1998; telephone surveys with those students are planned. Project Northland II seeks to continue the intervention and evaluation methods that have been successful with Project Northland I, using the community as the unit of intervention and analysis, having an exclusive focus on preventing adolescent alcohol use, building on the long-term participation of all of the communities from Project Northland, and maintaining the lower rates of alcohol use that have been achieved. This is an Interactive Research Proposal Grant, with Project Northland III, which adds community mobilization, direct action strategies, and community-level measures to what is proposed in this application.
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