Optimizing a Drug Abuse Prevention Program for Dissemination

This project is a hybrid efficacy/effectiveness trial of a streamlined version of the Bridges program, an evidence-based intervention (EBI) to prevent substance abuse and mental health disorders. Bridges is an integrated parent-youth intervention evaluated in a randomized controlled trial (RCT) with Mexican Americans (immigrant and U.S. born) that showed long-term effects on multiple outcomes: substance use initiation and escalation, externalizing and internalizing symptoms, deviant peer association, and grade point average (GPA) in early adolescence; alcohol abuse disorder, binge drinking, marijuana use, risky sexual behavior, diagnosed mental disorder, and school dropout in late adolescence. Building on evidence of core intervention components and strategies for redesigning EBIs for the real-world, investigators will partner with low-income, multiethnic schools to adapt the program to a brief, 4-session format (Bridges short program, BSP), and optimize engagement, delivery, training, and implementation monitoring systems to facilitate dissemination and sustainability. The proposed RCT will also examine whether a parent-youth EBI can impact multiple channels of youth self-regulation (e.g., biological, behavioral, emotional) during adolescence when neurobiological systems are changing rapidly, and whether preexisting individual differences in self-regulation moderate program effects.