Recreational use of prescription opioids among adolescents is a significant and growing public health concern and has been referred to as an emerging epidemic in the U.S. Abuse of prescription opioids among adolescents has been estimated to have increased approximately 542 percent in the past decade, making prescription opioids the second most commonly abused illicit drug among adolescents in the U.S. Although a number of sciencebased, interactive, drug abuse prevention programs exist focused on preventing use of nonprescription drugs in youth, to our knowledge, no sciencebased, interactive program focused on the prevention of prescription opioid abuse among youth exists. Given that adolescents'views about the recreational use of prescription opioids differ in systematic ways from use of illegal drugs, developing an effective prevention program for youth targeted specifically at prescription opioid abuse is critical. In this STTR project, we propose to develop an interactive, computer program focused on the prevention of prescription opioid abuse among high school aged adolescents. This program will be grounded in a scientific understanding of risk factors for prescription opioid abuse among youth, employ informational technologies which are effective in promoting relevant knowledge and skills, and present program content using strategies shown to be highly appealing to adolescents. During Phase I, we plan to demonstrate the scientific, technical and commercial merit and feasibility of the proposed project by completing 4 tasks:
Aim 1. We plan to develop the various components of an Introductory Module and two modules of the multimedia based, prescription opioid abuse prevention program, including the text, video, character scripts, animation and music components. We will work with focus groups of high school aged youth to determine how to best present the information in the program to this age group.
Aim 2. We plan to integrate all components of the multimedia based, drug abuse prevention program into a unified, computerized, multimedia package that can be run crossplatform.
Aim 3. We plan to conduct a series of feedback sessions with high school aged youth to obtain feedback from participants regarding their perception of each computer module's likeability, acceptability, ease of use, relevance to the experience of their age group, ability to promote learning and anticipated effect on behavior of high school aged youth. We then plan to revise program modules, as necessary, based on this feedback.
Aim 4. At the end of Phase I, we plan to prepare a final report, which will provide a summary of Phase I outcomes as well as an assessment of the merit and feasibility of developing the proposed prevention program. In Phase II, we plan to complete development of all components of the system and integrate all the completed, computerized program modules into a cohesive multimedia system and evaluate the effectiveness of the computer based prevention program. NARRATIVE: To our knowledge, the program we propose to develop in this STTR project would be the first, sciencebased, interactive program focused on the prevention of prescription opioid abuse among adolescents. The proposed computer program will be developed as a browser based program which can be delivered via Internet, intranet or via CDROM installation, which allows for its use in a wide variety of settings (e.g., home, school, community organizations, health care providers offices). This program may provide an engaging and effective tool for promoting the widespread delivery of sciencebased prevention of prescription opioid abuse among adolescents.
