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Combining in-school and community-based media efforts: reducing marijuana and alcohol uptake among younger adolescents

2005; Oxford University Press; Volume: 21; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/her/cyh056

1465-3648

Michael D. Slater, Kathleen Kelly, Ruth W. Edwards, Pamela Jumper Thurman, Barbara Plested, Thomas J. Keefe, Frank Lawrence, Kimberly L. Henry,

Behavioral Health and Interventions

This study tests the impact of an in-school mediated communication campaign based on social marketing principles, in combination with a participatory, community-based media effort, on marijuana, alcohol and tobacco uptake among middle-school students. Eight media treatment and eight control communities throughout the US were randomly assigned to condition. Within both media treatment and media control communities, one school received a research-based prevention curriculum and one school did not, resulting in a crossed, split-plot design. Four waves of longitudinal data were collected over 2 years in each school and were analyzed using generalized linear mixed models to account for clustering effects. Youth in intervention communities (N = 4216) showed fewer users at final post-test for marijuana [odds ratio (OR) = 0.50, P = 0.019], alcohol (OR = 0.40, P = 0.009) and cigarettes (OR = 0.49, P = 0.039), one-tailed. Growth trajectory results were significant for marijuana (P = 0.040), marginal for alcohol (P = 0.051) and non-significant for cigarettes (P = 0.114). Results suggest that an appropriately designed in-school and community-based media effort can reduce youth substance uptake. Effectiveness does not depend on the presence of an in-school prevention curriculum.