(FROM THE APPLICATION): The Institute for Substance Abuse Studies (ISAS) at the University of Virginia (UVA) proposes a 3-year project, GirlSpeak Out, which will target girls in six middle schools in Charlottesville, Virginia, and four neighboring rural counties. GirlSpeak Out encompasses both the idea of helping girls speak out about alcohol and tobacco issues and helping them achieve their peak performance level in school and in their families and communities. Successful media advocacy enlists the target audience to develop its strategies. GirlSpeak Out takes this principle to its logical conclusion by not merely consulting with the target audience but engaging it in all facets of producing a media message--ultimately leading to norm- changing, a more protective environment, and ongoing support for peak performance behavior. The question this project seeks to answer is whether """"""""involvement in a media advocacy project and participation in a prevention strategy help increase the resistance of the target population to alcohol and tobacco use."""""""" The hypothesis is that the hands-on, interactive process of the GirlSpeak Out project will foster a greater resistance to pro-use media messages and peer pressure and will also affect the perceptions of peers, parents, and the wider community, particularly about youth access and other policy issues. GirlSpeak Out will empower young women to speak out on alcohol and tobacco issues, helping them to develop, test, and produce a health promotion message focused on alcohol and tobacco. Focus groups are a major component of the GirlSpeak Out project. All facets of the project will be specifically tailored to suit the needs of each locality as revealed through formative focus group research and informational meetings held the first fall. A second major component of the program will be group building/media literacy. In each school seventh grade girls will be recruited to join the GirlSpeak Out Club. The club will subdivide into small working groups of 10 to 15 girls, each cofacilitated by a female UVA graduate student and a female high school student hired and trained by ISAS. At each school one faculty liaison will be hired to assist with recruiting and """"""""selling"""""""" the program to the girls, their parents, and the wider community. Transportation will be provided to encourage maximum participation. During the first year of the grant, the cofacilitators will work with the small groups to create a trusting environment in which the girls feel free to speak their minds. During club meetings, the girls will learn about the media and marketing--especially alcohol and tobacco advertising. Each summer, scheduled activities will keep the girls involved and maintain the small group and cross-age peer mentoring dynamic. In the second year of the project, the clubs will each conduct a health promotion campaign, choosing a message and target audience and developing, testing, and producing an alcohol- or tobacco-related health message in one of six media areas: video, radio, computer, print, performance arts, or fine arts. Local media experts will be retained as needed to assist each group. In the third year, all the by-now ninth grade girls will be offered public speaking and peer-facilitator training. That winter/spring they will either perform a community service project based on what they have learned in GirlSpeak Out or begin to serve as the next generation of facilitators for the seventh grade girls. The project staff will work with local steering committees to perpetuate the GirlSpeak Out project. Through talk shows, newspaper articles, and other media, the process and products of the project will be widely publicized, thus alerting local citizens and politicians to what young women have to say about the use and abuse of alcohol and tobacco.
