Alcohol use and misuse is so prevalent in our society that a majority of young people begin drinking years before it is legal for them to do so. As many as 30% become regular drinkers (monthly or more often) by grade 8, with the steepest increases between grades 5 and 7. These youth become the core of a larger group of drinkers in later adolescence, many of whom have problems with alcohol which impair their development and may become more severe in adult life. The purpose of the Interactive Projects for Alcohol Prevention (IPAP) is to develop and test a comprehensive, yet cost-efficient, combination of mass media and community interventions supporting young people in developing healthy lifestyles and deterring alcohol use. These interventions will be coordinated with existing school curricula from grades 4-5 through grades 7-8. The intervention approach is based on evidence of drinking by very young adolescents, theoretical models identifying modifiable intrapersonal, social, environmental and behavioral factors, and proven mass media and community models for health behavior change. A mass media campaign will target young people to reduce the demand for alcohol through positive images of non-drinking lifestyles; these messages will begin in grades 4-5 and continue over a four-year period. Media messages will be developed and receive preliminary effectiveness testing in the companion IPAP proposal. Parents of these young people also will be targeted by a mass media campaign modeling supportive parent behaviors. A community intervention program will be focused on reducing availability of alcohol for young adolescents through cooperative actions of parents, school officials, alcohol retailers, law enforcement officers, and local government officials. The interventions will be evaluated in a controlled design with eight rural Vermont school districts receiving the interventions and eight receiving measurement only. Cross-sectional surveys of 2800 students in grades 7-8 from intervention and comparison districts will be conducted at baseline and immediately after the four-year interventions to determine prevalence of alcohol use and related behaviors. A comprehensive theory- based set of measures will assess the impact of the interventions on mediators of drinking behavior. It is hypothesized that regular drinking among grade 7-8 students will be reduced by one-third in districts receiving this combination of powerful interventions. Process evaluation will assess the immediate impact of intervention components on the targeted students, their parents, and other key adults in their communities.
| Flynn, Brian S; Worden, John K; Bunn, Janice Yanushka et al. (2006) Mass media and community interventions to reduce alcohol use by early adolescents. J Stud Alcohol 67:66-74 |
| Callas, Peter W; Flynn, Brian S; Worden, John K (2004) Potentially modifiable psychosocial factors associated with alcohol use during early adolescence. Addict Behav 29:1503-15 |
