As a result of decades of research, numerous school-based drug abuse prevention programs have been demonstrated to be effective in reducing drug use among adolescents. However, to date the public health impact of these programs has been limited. The majority of the nation's schools are not using evidence-based drug abuse prevention programs. The question of how to best bridge the gap between research on prevention programs and practice in schools has received limited scientific attention, and there is an urgent need for studies that evaluate strategies designed to increase the adoption, implementation, and maintenance of evidence-based programs. This study will evaluate a comprehensive training and consultation approach to increase implementation and maintenance of Project Towards No Drug Use (TND), an evidence-based drug abuse prevention program for high school students. Project TND has shown positive one-year outcomes over three experimental replication trials, in regular and continuation (high-risk) high school settings, and is considered a model or exemplary program by NIDA, CSAP, and Health Canada, as well as several state and local agencies. Schools within a national sample of school districts that have recently adopted (purchased) Project TND will be randomly assigned to one of three conditions: (1) a standard TND training condition, in which teachers will receive a pre-implementation training workshop only; (2) a comprehensive Implementation Support condition in which teachers will receive the standard pre-implementation training workshop, plus web-based interactive feedback, on-site peer coaching, and off-site technical assistance, and school and school district administrators will receive consultation and technical assistance to assist them in developing organizational capacity for program maintenance; and (3) a delayed intervention control condition. We will determine the relative effectiveness of the two interventions on fidelity of program implementation and program maintenance. We will also examine the effects of the two intervention groups, relative to the control group, on student use of tobacco, alcohol, marijuana, and other drugs. We hypothesize that both of the training conditions will result in greater reductions in student drug use relative to the delayed-intervention control condition. Furthermore, the comprehensive-implementation support condition will produce greater fidelity of implementation, program maintenance, and reductions in student drug use relative to the teacher training workshop-only condition. The goal of this research is to develop and evaluate a prototype for a training system that can be used to facilitate rapid research-to practice technology transfer of evidence-based substance abuse prevention programs, thereby increasing the public health impact of these programs.
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