Adoption of Drug Abuse Prevention Training (ADAPT)
Under a grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), the ADAPT project was conducted in 10 rural disadvantaged Appalachian school districts in central PA. The primary purpose of this project was to compare two approaches to Life Skills Training (LST) as a substance abuse prevention strategy. The first approach used the standard Life Skills Training curriculum with an added parental component. This will be conducted in three schools. The second approach used an Infusion Model of the Life Skills Training Curriculum (I-LST) with an added parental component. The Infusion Model attempted to guide teachers in modifying the LST curriculum so that it becomes part of the existing curriculum and courses at each school. The last set of schools (3) served as a comparison group. We hypothesized that I-LST and LST would impact attitudes, coping skills, and decision making as mediating variables more than the comparison group. This impact on mediating variables in turn delayed the onset of use of alcohol, tobacco, marijuana, and inhalants. Co-principal Investigators for the ADAPT project were Ed Smith, DrPH , Director of Evaluation Research for the Prevention Research Center, and Judith Vicary, Ph.D. , Professor of Biobehavioral Health; John Swisher, Ph.D. , Professor of Counselor Education, and Lori Bechtel, Ph.D. , Professor of Biobehavioral Health at Altoona College, are co-investigators. This project was administered through the Institute for Policy Research and Evaluation (IPRE) at Penn State University. For more information, contact Ed Smith, DrPH.