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

2005, Health Education Research

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, splitplot 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 5 4216) showed fewer users at final post-test for marijuana [odds ratio (OR) 5 0.50, P 5 0.019], alcohol (OR 5 0.40, P 5 0.009) and cigarettes (OR 5 0.49, P 5 0.039), one-tailed. Growth trajectory results were significant for marijuana (P 5 0.040), marginal for alcohol (P 5 0.051) and non-significant for cigarettes (P 5 0.114). Re-sults suggest that an appropriately designed inschool and community-based media effort can reduce youth substance uptake. Effectiveness does not depend on the presence of an in-school prevention curriculum.