One-year outcomes of Project Towards No Drug Abuse.
OBJECTIVE
This paper presents the 1-year outcomes evaluation of Project Towards No Drug Abuse (Project TND), a large-scale indicated drug abuse prevention program in southern California applied to continuation high school youth, who are at high risk for drug abuse.


METHODS
The efficacy of nine-lesson health motivation--social skills--decision-making curriculum was evaluated in a three-condition experimental design. Twenty-one schools were randomly assigned by block to one of three conditions--standard care (control), classroom program, and classroom program plus a semester-long school-as-community component. A pretest was followed by a 3-week-long drug abuse prevention program and then a posttest at 14 continuation high schools. The 7 standard care schools received only the pretest followed by the posttest (same time duration). Subjects were followed up 1 year later.


RESULTS
Changes in use of cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, and hard drugs were assessed in a pretest-1-year follow-up time interval. The follow-up rate was 67% (analysis n = 1,074). Indicated preventive effects were found on alcohol and hard drug use. No differences were found across the two program conditions.


CONCLUSIONS
Project TND is the first program to demonstrate 1-year self-reported behavioral effects on alcohol use and hard drug use among older, high-risk youth by using a school-based, limited-session model.
Sussman
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Institute for Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Research, University of Southern California, Los Angeles 90033, USA. ssussma@hsc.usc.edu
Dent
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Stacy
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Craig
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D000293:Adolescent; D002140:California; D005260:Female; D006266:Health Education; D006801:Humans; D013287:Illicit Drugs; D008297:Male; D015397:Program Evaluation; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs; D012307:Risk Factors; D019966:Substance-Related Disorders / Q000517:prevention & control*
D013287:Illicit Drugs; D011619:Psychotropic Drugs