title: Engaging communities to prevent underage drinking.
abstract: Community-based efforts offer broad potential for achieving population-level reductions in alcohol misuse among youth and young adults. A common feature of successful community strategies is reliance on local coalitions to select and fully implement preventive interventions that have been shown to be effective in changing factors that influence risk of youth engaging in alcohol use, including both proximal influences and structural and/or environmental factors related to alcohol use. Inclusion of a universal, school-based prevention curriculum in the larger community-based effort is associated with the reduction of alcohol use by youth younger than 18 years of age and can help reach large numbers of youth with effective alcohol misuse prevention.
authors.affiliation: Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of South Carolina, Columbia, South Carolina.
authors.forename: Abigail A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Fagan
authors.forename: J David
authors.initials: JD
authors.lastname: Hawkins
authors.forename: Richard F
authors.initials: RF
authors.lastname: Catalano
mesh_terms: D000293:Adolescent; D000294:Adolescent Behavior / Q000523:psychology; D000367:Age Factors; D000428:Alcohol Drinking / Q000453:epidemiology / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000523:psychology; D006293:Health Promotion / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D012111:Residence Characteristics; D012307:Risk Factors