Model Programs Incorporating Evidence Based Strategies   

Across Ages

Originally designed as a school-based program for substance abuse prevention, the model was expanded to address multiple risk/protective factors and can be utilized as a wide-ranging prevention strategy incorporating life skills training, promoting pro-social norms and connecting to community prevention efforts in a variety of settings. Across Ages is a school and community based drug prevention program that seeks to strengthen the bonds between adults and youth and provide opportunities for positive community involvement. The centerpiece of Across Ages is the involvement of older adults as mentors for youth ages 9 to 15. In addition to spending time with their mentors, children in Across Ages are involved in community service activities that benefit the neighborhoods around their schools, and they receive classroom instruction to cope with stress and promote positive decision-making. To learn more about Across Ages click on www.temple.edu/cil/acrossages.htm.

Life Skills Training

Life skills Training is a highly rated, recommended and researched substance abuse prevention program today. Rather than just teaching information about a drug this program teaches students to develop skills so they are less likely to engage in high-risk behaviors. Life Skills is designed for elementary and junior high school students and has been effective with white middle-class and ethnic-minority students in rural, suburban, and inner-city populations. Life Skills Training consists of three major components: Drug Resistance Skills, Personal Self-Management Skills, and General Social Skills. Drug Resistance Skills enable young people to recognize and challenge misconceptions about tobacco, alcohol, and other drug use. By increasing perception of person risk and life skills training students learn alcohol, tobacco, and drug abuse information and resistance skills to deal with peer and media pressure through coaching and practice. Personal Self-Management Skills teach students how to examine their self-image and its effects on behavior. Students learn to set goals, make decisions, analyze problems and consider the consequences of each solution before making a decision. They also learn to look at challenges in a positive light. General Social Skills teach students to communicate effectively and avoid misunderstandings. Students also learn to initiate conversations and handle social requests. Life Skills Training teaches students that they have a choice other then being aggressive or passive. To learn more about Life Skills Training click on www.lifeskillstraining.com.

Positive Action

This approach incorporates evidence based strategies such as increasing perception of personal risk, life skills training, promoting pro-social norms and connecting to community prevention efforts. Positive Action is a comprehensive program for students 3-18 years old. It is targeted for all groups of individuals, regardless of age, gender, race, urban, rural, suburban, etc. Its methodology integrates daily classroom curriculum with a school based prevention program. The Positive Action approach teaches physical, intellectual, social, and emotional positive actions. Students focus on the importance of their thoughts, actions, and feelings. Some of the goals of this program are to improve students’ academic performance, instill students motivation to learn, assist the school, improve students’ behavior, develop students character, develop well rounded students, develop thinking skills, and promote good mental health in students. This program has been effective in increasing protective factors such as social skills, positive personal characteristics, knowledge regarding risks associated with substance use, information on positive health behaviors, promoting negative attitude toward drug-related topics, positive relationships with adults, positive bonding to social institutions, and commitment to pro-social values. To learn more about Positive Action click on the link www.positiveaction.net.

Project Alert

This program is designed for sixth through eighth grade students. The goals of Project ALERT are to prevent adolescents from beginning to use drugs, and to prevent those who have already experimented from becoming regular users. Also, to prevent or curb risk factors demonstrated to predict drug use. The curriculum achieves these goals by motivating adolescents not to use drugs and by teaching them skills to translate that motivation into effective resistance. The lessons that focus on correcting misperceptions of norms, beliefs about drugs, and intentions help motivate adolescents not to use. Other evidence based strategies incorporated in Project Alert are life skills training and increasing perception of personal risk. These strategies are used to teach students to recognize that most students don’t use drugs, understand the consequences of using drugs, and resist internal and social pressures. To learn more about Project Alert click on www.projectalert.com.

Project Northland

Project Northland is rated an exemplary program by the U.S. Department of Education. The focus is on prevention of alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use for students in grades six through eight. The project’s goals are to delay the age when young people begin drinking, reduce alcohol among young people who have already tried it and limit the number of drug related problems. Project Northland was effective in changing peer influence to use alcohol, normative expectations about how many young people drink, and parent-child communication about the consequences of alcohol use and the reasons for not using alcohol. By incorporating evidence based strategies such as correcting misperceptions of norms, increasing perception of personal risk, life skills training and promoting pro-social norms Project Northland teaches youth decision making skills, assists in strengthening parenting skills, teaches youth interpersonal skills and provides information on substance abuse. To learn more about Project Northland click on the link www.hazelden.org.

Promoting Alternative Thinking Strategies (PATHS)

PATHS is a comprehensive program for promoting emotional and social competencies and reducing aggression and behavior problems in elementary school-aged children while simultaneously enhancing the educational process. PATHS designed an innovative curriculum to be used by both educators and counselors. This curriculum incorporates life skills trainings by teaching students to build emotional literacy, self control, social skills, positive peer relationships and interpersonal problem solving skills. It has improved self control, understanding and recognition of emotions, increased ability to tolerate frustration and use of more effect conflict-resolution. To learn more about PATHS click on www.prevention.psu.edu

Seattle Social Development

The Seattle Social Development Project promotes pro-social norms and corrects misperception of norms by training teachers in active classroom management, promoting children’s pro-social involvement and commitment to the norm of not using drugs. This is a school based intervention program for grades 1-6 that seeks to reduce shared childhood risks for delinquency and drug abuse by enhancing protective factors and decreasing risk factors. Targeted risk factors to decrease are family management problems, early anti-social behaviors, academic failure, low commitment to schools, and friends involved in problem behaviors. Targeted protective factors to increase are opportunities, life skills, and bonding with family and schools. By increasing these protective factors students have healthy beliefs and clear standards which lead to healthy behaviors. Therefore students avoid drugs, delinquency, risky sexual behavior, violence and dropping out of school. To learn more about Seattle Social Development click on www.preventionnet.com.

Second Step

This program is designed for Pre k-8th grade students to reduce impulsive, high risk, and aggressive behaviors. Students learn to recognize and understand feelings, make positive and effective choices, and keep anger from escalating into violence. Research indicates that aggressive behavior in children predicts risk of later delinquency, substance abuse, school dropout, early parenthood, and depression. Classroom use of the Second Step program incorporates strategies such as life skills training for students to develop the skills they need to create safe environments and become successful adults. Integration activities tie the lessons into academic learning requirements—health, science, math, social studies, and language arts—helping teachers build on what they are already doing in the classroom. To learn more about Second Step click on www.cfchildren.org/violence.htm.

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Additional Resources on Evidence Based Strategies   

Preventing Drug Abuse Among Children and Adolescents: A Research Based Guide
http://www.nida.nih.gov/Prevention/Prevopen.html
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) provides an excellent primer on research based prevention strategies.

CSAP’s Model Programs
http://www.samhsa.gov
The Center for Substance Abuse Prevention lists model researched based programs with links to abstracts for each program, including contact personnel. Click “Prevention” and then click “SAMHSA Model Programs.”

Drug Strategies
http://www.drugstrategies.org/index.html
Drug Strategies is a non-profit research institute that promotes more effective approaches to the nation’s drug problems and supports private and public initiatives that reduce the demand for drugs through prevention, treatment and law enforcement.

PreventionNet
http://www.preventionnet.com
The focus of PreventionNet is accurate information on prevention programs for which there is credible scientific evidence of effectiveness. Through the PreventionNet website, information concerning the most effective prevention programs currently available is provided in a brief and straightforward way.

The National Social Norms Resource Center
http://www.socialnorms.org
The National Social Norms Resource Center, an independent center that supports, promotes and provides technical assistance in the application of the social norms approach to a broad range of health, safety and social justice issues, including alcohol-related risk-reduction and the prevention of tobacco abuse. Researchers and practitioners at the 2004 National Social Norms Conference announced important new findings about the effectiveness of the social norms approach in high school, college, and community-wide settings. These press releases are available here.

Social Norms Link
http://www.socialnormslink.com
This is your place to get information on the Social Norms approach, sample issues, links to other related sites and The Social Norms Report- a leading source of social norms data.

Tanglewood Research Prevention Knowledge Base
http://www.tanglewood.net/services/knowledgebase/
If you are looking for a bibliography of prevention research, this site lists 100 articles alphabetically by author. A variety of journals and publications are represented.

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Demographic Data

Monitoring the Future
http://monitoringthefuture.org
This site includes a comprehensive summary of an ongoing national survey on alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use by 8th, 10th and 12th grade students, with a particular emphasis on recent trends in the use of licit and illicit drugs that is available for viewing or downloading.

National Criminal Justice Reference Service (NCJRS)
http://www.ncjrs.org
This site contains an extensive source of information on criminal and juvenile justice. It includes information from the Bureau of Justice and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy.

National Household Survey
http://www.health.org/govstudy/bkd376/
SAMHSA’s national survey on drug abuse.

National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)
http://www.nida.nih.gov/infofax/infofaxindex.html
This page includes statistics on drug abuse, drug profiles, and special population issues.

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Higher Education

The Network for Dissemination of Curriculum Infusion (NDCI)
http://www.neiu.edu/~cinfusi
This site reports on the Curriculum Infusion strategy in higher education. The Network for Dissemination of Curriculum Infusion (NDCI) at Northeastern Illinois University served as the national dissemination agent for CI in higher education.

Core Institute
http://www.siu.edu/departments/coreinst/public_html/index.html
This site, developed by the Core Institute at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, contains reports and statistical data regarding substance abuse in higher education. It also contains information about the Core Alcohol and Drug Survey.

The Harvard School of Public Health
http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/cas/
This page contains reports on results of an ongoing survey of over 15,000 students at 140 four-year colleges in 40 states.

Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention
http://www.edc.org/hec/abouthec.htm
Funded by the U.S. Department of Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, this site provides support and technical resources and assistance to all institutions of higher education in their efforts to address alcohol and other drug problems.

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Educational and Instructional Design

U.S. Department of Education On-Line Ordering System
http://www.edpubs.org/webstore/Content/search.asp
A wide variety of publications are available on this site, including ones on alcohol, tobacco, other drugs, bullying, prevention and violence prevention.

The Teacher List
http://www.theteacherlist.ca/
Every day this site features and links to a different site of value to teachers.

Collaborative Lesson Archive
http://www.uic.edu
The University of Illinois has put together an exhaustive sample of lesson plans from preschool through eighth grade. Search “Lesson Plans” on home page for samples by subject matter (Art, Math, Science, Drama, Music, Social Studies, Geography, Physical Education, Trips, History, Reading, and Writing).

James Madison University
http://www.jmu.edu
This is a comprehensive listing of links related to lesson plans in the following categories: General, English/Language Arts, Science, Mathematics, Social Studies, The Arts, Educational Technology, Foreign Language, Health, Interdisciplinary, Physical Education, Vocational Education, School Library Media, Bilingual/English as a Second Language. Click “search JMU” and enter “lesson plans.”

Student Learning Objectives
http://www.kent.wednet.edu/KSD/IS/SLO/index.html
Excellent examples of learning examples in k-12 in Health, Language Arts, Math, Music, Physical Education, Science, Social Studies, Visual Arts, World Language, and Writing classes.

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