Prevention Science Supplemental Issue Commentary Promoting Healthy Sexual Practices: What We Have Learned from 100 Years of Work

Excerpt

There are strong theoretical and empirical grounds for predicting that effective family focused interventions to prevent conduct problems and substance use should also prevent sexual risk behaviors. Spoth et al. (2013) considered it a “striking gap” that no studies could be found that examined the impact of such universal interventions on young-adult sexual risk behavior as mediated by substance use in adolescence. Yet, it is not so surprising when it is considered what must be accomplished in order to address this question. First, an effective prevention program must be designed and tested, and then many years of dedication to retaining participants and collecting further assessment waves for examining longer term outcomes are required of the investigators—as well as a tremendous sustained funding investment usually by federal agencies, in this case, predominantly NIDA. In fact, the combined studies reported here represent over 100 study years of work all told from planning to publication. From this point of view, it is amazing that six such studies can be presented in this issue! …