Substance Use Prevention Campaign for American Indian Youth

Not Applicable

Completed

Conditions: Adolescent Substance Use

Interventions: Behavioral: Be Under Your Own Influence

Registration Number: NCT03051633

Lead Sponsor: Colorado State University

Brief Summary: The goal of this project is to test the effectiveness of a successful anti-drug communications campaign (Be Under your Own Influence) to lower substance use among AI 7th graders. The campaign uses messages that support youths' personal autonomy and future aspirations, and these messages are delivered to 7th graders using high school students. Our goal is to develop a turnkey package for the broader population of AI youth and schools and to develop components that can incorporate flexibility and creativity in their delivery.

Detailed Description: Substance use is a particularly dangerous risk to middle-school youth, and American Indian (AI) youth are at increased risk. We have found over the course of more than three decades that substance use among AI youth is consistently higher than that of other ethnic/racial groups.

Schools are often the site for adolescent drug prevention efforts, but results from these efforts are often modest or even disappointing. This intervention adapts an existing campaign (Be Under Your Own Influence; BUYOI) that has been found to be effective in reducing substance use and that uses campaign messages that are congruent with AI culture. The intervention will be adapted using significant contributions from tribal members, including youth, teachers, parents, elders, and other community members. This proposal includes active involvement of local advisory boards, hiring of a local AI liaison, focus groups, a youth photo voice component, and use of AI staff from our Center and from the Native American Cultural Center at our university.

The adapted anti-drug and alcohol use communications campaign will be delivered by selected high school students to 7th grade students. A distinguishing feature of the BUYOI campaign is a message that targets outcome expectations related to aspirations, autonomy, and physical harms. The campaign will use multiple channels of communication including print (e.g., posters and fliers), video and audio spots, presentations, and social media to deliver messages that are designed to alter outcome expectancies, intentions, and ultimately substance use among targeted youth.

The campaign will be delivered to two cohorts of 7th graders, with 4 longitudinal measurement occasions for each cohort. Five middle schools (and their corresponding high schools) have been recruited for the study, where three of these will be randomly assigned to the intervention condition and two to the control condition. Multilevel data analysis will test for effects of campaign exposure on autonomy, aspirations, perceived harm, and intentions to use.

Because of the heavy involvement of the school and community in the development and delivery of the intervention, we will be able to incorporate sustainability into the design of all integrated components. Ultimately, our goal is to develop a turnkey package for the broader population of reservation-based AI youth and schools and to develop components that can incorporate flexibility and creativity in their delivery. For example, a school or local group may implement the campaign in its original form or they may modify aspects to make them more pertinent to their community.

Recruitment & Eligibility

Status: COMPLETED

Sex: All

Target Recruitment: 528

Inclusion Criteria

Attend 7th grade in targeted schools that are on or near American Indian reservation and have received parental consent

Exclusion Criteria

No parental consent

Study & Design

Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL

Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Be Under Your Own Influence Intervention	Be Under Your Own Influence	School-based anti-substance use communications campaign

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Marijuana Initiation	18 months	Number of participants who self-reported first-time marijuana use initiation during the study period
Alcohol Intoxication Initiation	18 months	Number of participants self-reporting first-time alcohol intoxication initiation during the study period.
Alcohol Initiation	18 months	The number of students who self-reported initiated alcohol for the first time during the study period