The following are curriculum-based programs:

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BABES: beginning alcohol and addictions basic education studies

BABES: Beginning Alcohol and Addictions Basic Education Studies is a primary prevention puppet and story-telling program designed to promote and develop early resiliency skills. Topics include self-image, decision making, coping with negative feelings, alcohol and other drug information help resources and more. It is offered to Kindergarten and Grades 1 & 2.

• BABES teaches children to practice living skills and make early healthy decisions about alcohol and other drugs.

• Lessons and topics include: self image, peer pressure and decision making, coping skills.

• Presentations will also include alcohol and other drug information, getting help, helping the child in a chemically dependent home.

Rates:

Kindergarten – 4 sessions, $200/class

Grades 1 or 2 – 7 sessions, $350/class

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elementary life skills training (ELST)

Elementary Life Skills Training (ELST) is an evidence-based prevention program with proven results in long-term alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use reduction. It promotes and fosters skills for decision making, stress management, assertiveness, communication and more. It is offered over a consecutive three year period in late elementary school, usually Grades 3, 4 and 5 (8 sessions each). This program:

• Emphasizes proven skills training methods

• Provides alcohol, tobacco and other drug prevention related information

• Booster sessions maintain prevention effects

Rates:

1st year – 8 sessions: $400/class

2nd year – 8 sessions: $400/class

3rd year – 8 sessions: $400/class

Plus workbook fee: $50/package of 10

Add to total of workbooks a 5% shipping/handling fee.

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life skills training (LST)

Life Skills Training (LST) is an evidence-based prevention program that seeks to influence major social and psychological factors that promote the initiation and early use of substances. Life Skills has distinct elementary (8 to 11 years old) and middle school (11 to 14 years old) curricula that are delivered in a series of classroom sessions over 3 years. The sessions use lecture, discussion, coaching, and practice to enhance students' self-esteem, feelings of self-efficacy, ability to make decisions, and ability to resist peer and media pressure. LST consists of three major components that address critical domains found to promote substance use. Research has shown that students who develop skills in these three domains are far less likely to engage in a wide range of high-risk behaviors. The three components each focus on a different set of skills:

Drug Resistance Skills enable young people to recognize and challenge common misconceptions about substance use, as well as deal with peers and media pressure to engage in substance use.

Personal Self-Management Skills help students to examine their self-image and its effects on behavior, set goals and keep track of personal progress, identify everyday decisions and how they may be influenced by others, analyze problem situations, and consider the consequences of alternative solutions before making decisions.

General Social Skills give students the necessary skills to overcome shyness, communicate effectively and avoid misunderstandings, use both verbal and nonverbal assertiveness skills to make or refuse requests, and recognize that they have choices other than aggression or passivity when faced with tough situations.

Outcomes

The outcomes relative to controls included the following:

• Reduced initiation of cigarette smoking by 75%, and 3 months after program completion, by 67%

• Reduced alcohol use by 54%, heavy drinking by 73%, and drinking to intoxication one or more times a week by 79%

• Reduced marijuana use by 71%, and weekly or more frequent use by 83%

• Reduced multiple drug use by 66%

• Reduced both long-term and short-term substance abuse

• Reduced pack-a-day smoking by 25%

• Decreased use of inhalants, narcotics, and hallucinogens by up to 50%

Benefits

• Develops resistance to peer and media pressure to use substances

• Develops a positive self-image

• Develops decisionmaking and problem-solving skills

• Helps youth manage anxiety

• Fosters effective communication

• Builds healthy relationships

• Increases youths' self-confidence in social situations

How It Works

The Life Skills Training curriculum for middle (or junior high) schools is intended to run for eighteen 45-minute class periods. A booster intervention has been developed that is taught over 10-12 class periods in the second year and 5-7 in the third year. This means the initial program should be implemented with sixth or seventh grade students, followed by booster sessions during the next 2 years. Optional violence prevention units can be implemented for each year of the program, extending the overall number of class sessions.

The Life Skills Training elementary school curriculum runs for 24 class sessions, each 30 to 45 minutes long, to be conducted over 3 years. The first year (i.e., Level 1) is composed of eight class sessions and covers all skill areas. The remaining booster sessions are divided into eight class sessions for Level 2 and eight for Level 3. The booster sessions provide additional skill development and opportunities to practice in key areas. Level 1 is designed for either grade three or four, depending on when the transition from elementary to middle school begins.

Both the elementary and middle school programs can either be taught intensively (consecutively every day, or two to three times a week) until the program is complete, or it can be taught on a more extended schedule (once a week). Both formats have proven to be equally effective.

Recognition

• Model Program: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

• Programs That Work (Discontinued): Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

• Model Program: Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention

• Model Program: White House Office of National Drug Control Policy

• Exemplary Program: U.S. Department of Education

• Programs That Work: National Institute on Drug Abuse

Rates:

Grade 6 – 18 sessions: $900/class

Grade 7 – 12 sessions: $600/class

Grade 8 – 7 sessions: $400/class

Plus workbook fee:

1st year: $60/package of 10

2nd year: $50/package of 10

3rd year: $40/package of 10

Add to total of workbooks a 5% shipping/handling fee.

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too good for drugs

Too Good For Drugs (TGFD) is an evidence-based prevention program proven to reduce the intention to use alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs in middle and high school students. Developed by the Mendez Foundation for use with students in kindergarten through second grade, TGFD has a separate, developmentally appropriate curriculum for each grade level, and its designed to develop:

• Personal and interpersonal skills relating to alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drug use.

• Appropriate attitudes toward alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drug use.

• Knowledge of the negative consequences of alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drug use and benefits of a drug-free lifestyle.

• Positive peer norms.

The program's highly interactive teaching methods encourage students to bond with prosocial peers, and engage students through role-play, cooperative learning, games, small group activities, and class discussions. Students have many opportunities to participate and receive recognition for involvement. TGFD also impacts students through a family component used in each grade level: "Home Workouts" in kindergarten through second grade.

Target population

TGFD targets kindergarten through second grade.

Benefits

• Reduces risk and enhances protective factors that affect alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drug use.

• Reduces intentions to use alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs.

• Develops more appropriate attitudes toward alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs.

• Improves decision making, goal setting, and peer resistance.

• Increases friendships with peers less likely to use alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs.

How it works

TGFD consists of sequential curricula, developmentally appropriate to each grade level, which builds on skills learned in the previous years. While one year on TGFD has produced measurable positive effects, multi-year programming prevents or reduces degradation of these effects. For maximum effectiveness, TGFD should be implemented each school year. TGFD uses proven, research-based strategies including:

• Multi-lesson, Multi-grade Level Programming: 10 lessons per grade level, kindergarten through second grade. 30 to 40 minute sessions.

• Normative Education: provides accurate information about the percentage of youth that use drugs and the percentage that would disapprove if their friends used drugs.

• Information on Harmful Effects of Drug Use: raises students’ perception of risk.

• Prosocial Skills Development: Features goal setting, decision-making, coping, communication, and peer refusal skills.

• Diverse Role-Play Situations: relating to alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drug use and associated problem behaviors provide many opportunities for practice.

• Cooperative Learning: promotes prosocial skills and academic development.

• Parental Involvement: promotes discussion and reinforces concepts and skills students learn from TGFD.

Rate: Grades 1 and 2 (10 sessions each). Each class level – $500/class

Plus workbooks and other consumables: $2.00/student

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protecting you/protecting me

Protecting You/Protecting Me® (PY/PM) is an evidence-based prevention curriculum for elementary students in grades one through five (6 to 11 years old). Designed to reduce alcohol-related injury and death in our Nation's youth, PY/PM:

• Is proven to change students’ knowledge about their brains and personal development

• Improves elementary students’ vehicle safety skills: their ability to protect themselves when they have no option but to ride with an adult who is not alcohol-free

The curriculum

• Incorporates the latest research on human brain development

• Focuses on the immediate risks of using alcohol before age 21

• Includes parental involvement activities

Recognition

• Model Program: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

• Texas Commission on Alcohol and Drug Abuse State Wide Replication Program

• Endorsed by the National Elementary Principals Association

• Endorsed by the American Academy of Pediatrics

Intended Population

The target population for PY/PM is the universal population of students enrolled in grades one through five in elementary school. (PY/PM is designed to be taught each year over a 5-year period as students progress from first to fifth grades.

Benefits

• Increases non-use attitudes and decisions regarding underage alcohol use

• Increases knowledge about the human brain and immediate risks posed by exposure to alcohol during development

• Increases awareness of the law and positive attitudes toward the use of rules and laws

• Increases refusal and self-protection skills with regard to riding with impaired (unsafe) drivers

• Increases media literacy and ability to resist advertising appeals

• Increases stress management and decision-making skills

How It Works

Protecting You/Protecting Me is a 5-year continuum of interactive classroom modules providing 42 lessons (8 lessons in each of grades one through four and 10 in grade five) and 40 required reinforcement activities (8 in each grade) that promote students' ownership. PY/PM is designed to be infused into a school's core curriculum, and each lesson carefully integrates several standard educational objectives, including those related to health behaviors and information, personal and interpersonal skills, and identifying influencing factors.

The curriculum addresses eight topics:

• Our Brain

• Growth and Development

• Health and Safety

• Rules and Laws

• Friends

• Choices and Decisions

• Media Awareness

• Communication (especially with adults)

PY/PM's interactive and affective teaching processes include role-play, small group and classroom discussion, reading, writing, story telling, surveys, art, and music. All 42 lessons are correlated to educational achievement objectives.

Rates:

Grades 1 - 4, 8 sessions each in grades level: $400 per class level

Grade 5, 10 sessions per grade level: $500 per class level

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keep a clear mind

Keep a Clear Mind (KACM) is an evidence-based prevention program that utilizes homework assignments to facilitate communication between students and parents. Topics include alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and tools to resist them. It is offered to Grades 4, 5 or 6 (5 sessions).

KACM lessons are based on a social skills training model and designed to help children develop specific skills to refuse and avoid the use of "gate-way" drugs. This unique, early intervention program has been shown to positively influence known risk factors for later substance abuse.

Target population

KACM is designed for upper-elementary-school students and their families. The program has been rigorously evaluated in field tests involving students in grades four through six and their parents.

Benefits

• Increases student ability to resist peer pressure to use tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana.
• Increases student recognition of the harmful effects of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana.
• Helps students identify and choose positive alternatives to substance abuse.
• Decreases students’ actual use of tobacco, alcohol, and marijuana.
• Helps parents become effective drug educators.
• Increases parent-child communication about substance abuse.

How it works

KACM consists of:

• Five sessions: One introductory session and four take-home lessons on tobacco, alcohol, marijuana and drug refusal.
• Five parent newsletters.
• Student incentives.

Four weekly lessons are sent home with the student, preferably on Monday. Lessons include a feedback sheet for parents to indicate that the lesson for that week has been completed, which is to be returned at the end of each week. Students returning the parent-signed sheet receive a small incentive such as a KACM bookmark, bumper sticker, or pencil. Students receive these incentives for completing the lesson, not for how well they score. Some schools use additional incentives for scoring well on the lessons. Biweekly parent newsletters are sent home with students for 10 weeks, beginning immediately after completion of the four take-home lessons.

Implementation essentials

The program is usually conducted over the course of five weeks during a school year.

Successful replication of KACM involves:

• Recruiting fourth, fifth, and/or sixth grade students to participate in the program.
• Recruiting a program facilitator (e.g., classroom teacher, counselor, etc.)
• Delivering lessons and newsletters, and monitoring the implementation of take-home lessons.
• Conducting pre- and post program outcome data collection to measure program effects.

Rate: Grades 4, 5 or 6 (5 sessions): $250/class

Plus consumable materials and incentives: $5.00/student

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project TNT (toward no tobacco use)

Project Towards No Tobacco Use (TNT) is an evidence-based comprehensive prevention, classroom-based curriculum designed to prevent or reduce tobacco use in youth 10 to 15 years old in grades five through ten. Upon completion of this program, students will be able to describe the course of tobacco-addiction, the consequences of using tobacco, and the prevalence of tobacco use among peers. Delivered in 10 core and 2 booster lessons, TNT is proven effective at helping youth to:

• Resist tobacco use and advocate no tobacco use

• Demonstrate effective communication, refusal, and cognitive coping skills

• Identify how the media and advertisers influence youth to use tobacco products

• Identify methods for building their own self-esteem

• Describe strategies for advocating no tobacco use

Project TNT is designed to counteract several different causes of tobacco use simultaneously because the behavior is determined by multiple causes. This comprehensive approach works well for a wide variety of youth who may have different risk factors influencing their tobacco use.

Recognition

• Model Program: Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

• Programs That Work: National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

• Exemplary Program: U.S. Department of Education

• Programs That Work (Discontinued): Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services

Program Background

Project TNT was initially funded, from 1987 to 1993, with a grant from the National Cancer Institute, National Institutes of Health, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The theory underlying Project TNT is that young people will best be able to resist using tobacco products if they 1) are aware of misleading social information that facilitates tobacco use (e.g., advertising, inflated prevalence estimates), 2) have skills that counteract the social pressures to achieve approval by using tobacco, and 3) appreciate the physical consequences that tobacco use may have on their own lives (e.g., the beginnings of addiction)

Intended Population

Project TNT was completed originally with seventh grade students. It has been successfully implemented with White, African-American, Hispanic/Latino, and Asian-American adolescents, 10 to 15 years old.

Benefits

• At the completion of this program, students will be able to:

• Describe the course of tobacco addiction and disease

• Demonstrate effective communication, refusal, and cognitive coping skills

• Identify how the media and advertisers influence teens to use tobacco products

• Identify methods for building their own self-esteem

How It Works

• Implementing Project TNT involves the following activities:

• A comprehensive, 10-day, classroom-based social influences program that examines media, celebrity, and peer portrayal of tobacco use

• Training in active listening, effective communication, and general assertiveness development along with methods for building self-esteem

• Education on the course of tobacco-related addiction and diseases; correction of inflated tobacco use prevalence estimates

• Learning tobacco-specific cognitive coping skills and assertive refusal techniques

• Practicing ways to counteract media portrayals of tobacco use, including social activism letter writing to make a public commitment to not using tobacco products

• Use of homework assignments, a classroom competition (i.e., the "TNT Game"), and a two-lesson booster program

• Longitudinal assessment material

Rate: Grades 5 - 8 (10 sessions) $500

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project ALERT

Project ALERT is an evidence-based model prevention program that uses participatory activities and videos with guided classroom discussion to stimulate peer interaction and challenge student beliefs and perceptions. Offered over two consecutive years, usually Grades 6 and 7 or Grades 7 and 8.

Program developers or their agents provided the Model Program information below.

Brief description

Project ALERT is a 2-year drug prevention curriculum for middle school students, 11 to 14 years old, focusing on the substances that adolescents are most likely to use: alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and inhalants. It seeks to motivate adolescents against drug use, teach adolescents the skills and strategies needed to resist prodrug pressures, and establish nondrug-using norms.

Program background

In the early 1980s, the RAND Corporation, an internationally recognized nonprofit institution established to improve policy and decision making through research and analysis, assessed the effectiveness of three major strategies for curtailing adolescent drug use: prevention, law enforcement, and treatment. Based on that study’s conclusions, the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation-funded RAND to develop and test Project ALERT between 1983 and 1993.

National dissemination of the program, underwritten by the Hilton Foundation, began in 1991. Project ALERT has a presence in all 50 States. More than 18,000 teachers in approximately 3,5000 school districts use Project ALERT in their classrooms. RAND is now developing and testing an enhanced version of Project ALERT that is designed for schools.

Recognition

• Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, U.S. Department of Health and Human Services: Model Program

• U.S. Department of Education: Exemplary Program

• White House Office of National Drug Control Central Policy: Exemplary Program

• National Prevention Network: Exemplary Program

• National Association of State Alcohol and Drug Abuse Directors: Exemplary Program

• Community Anti-Drub Coalitions of America: Exemplary Program

• National Middle School Association: Endorsement

Institute of Medicine Classification (IOM): universal, selective

Developed for high and low-risk adolescents from a variety of social economic backgrounds.

Intervention type: school-based

Content focus: alcohol, illegal drugs, tobacco

This program focuses primarily on alcohol, tobacco, and marijuana; it also includes materials on inhalants, cocaine, and other illegal drugs.

Protective factors

Individual

• Reasons not to use drugs
• Perceptions that few peers use, most disapprove
• Believe that one can resist prodrug pressures
• Intentions not to use
• Belief that friends respect nonusers
• Ability to identify and counter advertising appeals
• Multiple strategies for resisting drugs
• Ability to identify and resist internal pressures to use

Family

• Communication with parents and other adults

Peer

• Motivation and skills to help friends avoid drug use
• Responsible behavior modeled by peers

School

• Establishment of norms against drug use
• Cooperative learning
• Respect for others

Risk factors

Individual

• Current use of alcohol, tobacco, or other drugs
• Intention to use in the future
• Believe that drug use in not harmful or has positive effects
• Believe that drug use is normal
• Low self-esteem
• Inadequate resistance skills

Family

• Lack of clear norms against use
• Poor communication

Peer

• Peer drug use
• Peer approval of drugs

School

• High levels of drug use
• Low norms against use

Interventions by domain

Individual

• Education to build motivation and skills for avoiding drug use

Family

• Task-oriented family education sessions to improve family interactions (e.g., parent involvement in program homework assignments, etc.)

Peer

• Peer-resistance education

School

• Classroom drug education
• Classroom-based skills development

Community

• Education to alter perceptions of societal norms and expectations

Key program approaches

In-school curricula

The curriculum consists of weekly lessons that involve guided classroom discussions and small group activities that stimulate peer interaction and challenge student beliefs and perceptions; intensive role-playing activities to help students learn resistance skills.

Parent-child interactions

Parents are involved through homework assignments that involve parents in the learning process by facilitating parent-child discussions of drugs and how to resist using them.

Outcomes

The program achieved the following, relative to control group, 15 months after baseline.

Decreases in substance use

• 30% decrease in marijuana initiation rates.
• 60% decrease in current marijuana use in adult-led programs.
• 20% to 25% decrease in current and occasional cigarette use among baseline experimenters.
• 33% to 55% decrease in regular and heavy cigarette use among baseline experimenters.

Other types of outcomes

Significant enhancement of antidrug beliefs, with many effects persisting into 10th grade.

Project ALERT helps adolescents:

• Understand the consequences of using drugs
• Develop reasons not to use
• Understand the benefits of being drug-free
• Recognize that most people do not use drugs
• Identify and counter prodrug pressures
• Resist advertising appeals
• Support others in their decisions not to use
• Learn how to quit
• Communicate with parents
• Recognize alternatives to substance use

Rates:

Grades 6 or 7 (11 sessions) – $440

Grades 7 or 8 (3 sessions) – $120

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reconnecting youth (RY)

Reconnecting Youth (RY) is an evidence-based model prevention program that uses a partnership framework involving a positive peer culture, school personnel and parents to deliver interventions that address three central program goals: increased school performance, increased drug use control and decreased emotional distress. Students learn, practice and apply self-esteem enhancements strategies, decision-making skills, personal control strategies and interpersonal communicational techniques. It is offered throughout the school year to youth in Grades 9-12 who are at risk for school dropout. These youth may also exhibit multiple behavior problems, such as substance abuse, aggression, depression or suicide risk behaviors (60-90 sessions).

Rates:

Grades 9 - 12 (60 - 90 sessions) Approximately $3,000 per implementation

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project towards no drug abuse (TND)

An evidence-based prevention program designed to help high school youth resist substance use. It is highly interactive and includes motivational activities, social skills training and decision-making components. Methods of delivery include group discussions, games, role-playing exercises, videos and student worksheets. TND increases coping and self-control skills allowing students to understand misperceptions that may lead to substance abuse, express a desire not to abuse substances and state a commitment to discuss substance abuse with others.

Rates:

Grades 9, 10, 11 or 12 (12 sessions) ~ $600

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kids don’t gamble... wanna bet? (WB)

An interdisciplinary curriculum designed to prevent underage gambling through improved critical thinking and problem solving skills. WB explores age-appropriate, real-world issues associated with games of chance vs. games of skill, uses a decision making model to promote healthy choices and applies mathematical concepts of chance, probability and data analysis to evaluate information, explore the likelihood of winning and solve problems. Stories, a puppet show, behavioral rehearsal, role-plays and a video are utilized to teach the lessons.

Rates:

Grades 3, 4 or 5 (4 sessions); Grades 6, 7 or 8 (4 sessions); ~ $200 per class

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