One important potential impact of national prevention media efforts such as ONDCP is on the readiness of communities to take engage in local prevention activities. Community-based efforts are valuable for several reasons: Communities can organize and find funding for quality, theory-based in-school interventions; they can insist on greater law enforcement activity concerning youth substance use; they can provide an infrastructure for institutionalizing prevention activities; they help reinforce perceptions of community norms inconsistent with youth substance use. However, while media prevention campaigns are likely to enhance the climate for community readiness, they are unlikely alone to overcome obstacles to action. The proposed study will test the effects of community readiness interventions in eight communities, as compared with effects of ONDCP media campaign exposure in eight matched control communities absent such supportive intervention. Change in both community leader perceptions of community readiness and middle/junior high school student attitudes and behaviors will be measured. This effort may help inform a new model for media interventions, coupling them with relatively efficient community mobilization efforts, to maximize their potential impact. In addition, the presence or absence of community readiness activities, including locally-based media efforts, can also serve to enhance the effectiveness of quality, theory-based in-school interventions. We will also test the effects of an in-school intervention in community readiness treatment vs. control communities. We will do so by comparing change in attitudes that mediate substance use effects as well as differential levels of change in substance use behaviors themselves, in both the short-term and in a one-year follow-up, among seventh-grade students who receive a theory-based in-school intervention compared to seventh graders in comparison schools in the same community who do not.
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