Over the past decade, many new programs intended to prevent substance use among adolescents have been developed and evaluated. There has been a recent shift towards brief interventions for youth in school (Brown, 2001; D'Amico and Fromme, 2002) and health care settings, such as emergency rooms and inpatient clinics (Barnett et al., 2001; Colby et al., 1998; Monti et al., 1999). Although the primary care setting presents a unique opportunity to intervene with youth concerning drug use, such as marijuana or inhalants, many youth are not screened for use (Friedman et al., 1990; Johnson and Millstein, 2003; Middleman et al., 1995) and preventive services in this setting are significantly below recommended levels (Halpern-Felsher et al., 2000; Klein et al., 2001; Ozer et al., 2001). We are responding to RFA-DA-04-006, """"""""Screening and intervention for youth in primary care settings."""""""" The present proposal is designed to meet the objectives of the Exploratory/Developmental Grants program (R21) for studies that will contribute to the development of future, more intensive and larger research programs. The objectives of the proposed research are to: 1) explore the feasibility of adapting a brief intervention from our previous work for use in the primary care (PC) setting, and 2) assess the short-term efficacy of the intervention in the PC setting. During year 1, focus groups of high-risk youth (n=16), parents (n=8), and providers (n=8) will provide feedback on barriers to implementing a substance use brief intervention in a PC setting. We define high-risk youth as those who may have already developed regular patterns of use or have experienced some problems due to their use. In addition, the intervention will be pilot tested with 10 high-risk youth who will provide feedback on intervention content. Revisions will be made to the intervention curriculum based on this feedback and in year 2, the short-term efficacy of the intervention will be tested with a small sample of high-risk youth (n=30). This study will extend brief intervention research for youth, as it will be one of the first to examine the feasibility of implementing a brief substance use intervention to PC with high-risk youth and to determine the impact of this intervention on short-term outcomes. These findings will guide the development of an R01 proposal for a large-scale implementation and long-term evaluation of the intervention.
| D'Amico, Elizabeth J; Miles, Jeremy N V; Stern, Stefanie A et al. (2008) Brief motivational interviewing for teens at risk of substance use consequences: a randomized pilot study in a primary care clinic. J Subst Abuse Treat 35:53-61 |
| Stern, Stefanie A; Meredith, Lisa S; Gholson, Jessica et al. (2007) Project CHAT: a brief motivational substance abuse intervention for teens in primary care. J Subst Abuse Treat 32:153-65 |
