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01-12-2013

Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drug Use Prevention Programs in U.S. Schools: A Descriptive Summary

Authors: Revathy Kumar, Patrick M. O’Malley, Lloyd D. Johnston, Virginia B. Laetz

Published in: Prevention Science | Issue 6/2013

Abstract

This report identifies the prevalence of state, local, and commercially developed substance abuse prevention programs in middle and high schools from 2001 to 2007, using survey data from nationally representative samples of 1,206 schools. Based on school administrators’ reports, schools and school districts offer students an average of 1.62 prevention programs during their school years from elementary through high school. Bivariate and multivariate regression analyses were conducted with school demographic characteristics public versus private, size, population density, region of the country, school race/ethnic composition, and socioeconomic status of the student body (SES) as predictors of total number of programs that students received and of the relative use of local, state, and commercial programs. Schools in the West had significantly fewer prevention programs than those in other regions of the country. Students in predominantly White and in higher SES schools received significantly more prevention programs than students in majority African American, majority Hispanic, or in lower SES affluent schools. The most frequently reported programs that students received were locally developed. D.A.R.E. was the most widely adopted prevention program. Findings from this study suggest that schools often develop their own curriculum to suit their students’ needs, and students are exposed to multiple prevention programs through their school years, making it difficult to examine the effectiveness of any single program in preventing and reducing substance use among students.

The categories local, state, and commercial programs were based on the school administrators’ response to the questions “Please check the box below to indicate which best describes how this ATOD prevention program or segment of the health education curriculum was developed.” Local programs refer to any ATOD prevention programs developed by the school or school district, while state programs refer to those developed by a state educational agency and delivered in health education courses, or any other courses such as science, physical education, etc., or special ATOD prevention courses. Commercial programs are developed by private or academic organizations. Developers of commercial programs often oversee, train personnel (either personnel from the organization, or school teachers or nurses), and coordinate the delivery of the program. Currently, there are over 100 such programs available. Although D.A.R.E. is also a commercial program, it is included as a separate category because it is the most widely known and used ATOD prevention program.

Schools differed significantly by race/ethnicity (F _{(3, 1161)} = 272.55, p < 0.001), with predominantly White schools having a lower percentage of students enrolled in the free and reduced-cost lunch program compared with majority African-American, majority Hispanic, and All Other race/ethnicity composition schools.

The total number of programs within each school was calculated based on the percentage of students in the participating grade that took each of the listed prevention programs.

The decline from 2001 to 2007 is based on trend data from different schools each year; it is not based on longitudinal data from the same schools.

Usually the health education curriculum included the use of a comprehensive health education text book.

School administrators were not asked to report the key components for D.A.R.E. The key components for D.A.R.E are based on information from Making the Grade: a Guide to School Drug Prevention Programs (Drug Strategies 1999).

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Title: Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drug Use Prevention Programs in U.S. Schools: A Descriptive Summary
Authors: Revathy Kumar
Patrick M. O’Malley
Lloyd D. Johnston
Virginia B. Laetz
Publication date: 01-12-2013
Publisher: Springer US
Published in: Prevention Science / Issue 6/2013
Print ISSN: 1389-4986
Electronic ISSN: 1573-6695
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11121-012-0340-z

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Alcohol, Tobacco, and Other Drug Use Prevention Programs in U.S. Schools: A Descriptive Summary

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