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The study will assign 800 students in 46 continuation high school classrooms to receive the drug-prevention project's curriculum. Outcomes will be tested at one- and two-year intervals. Some of the students will participate in group activities directed by a teacher; others, in activities directed by student-selected peer leaders.

Researchers anticipate that the peer-led group will show less use of tobacco, marijuana, alcohol and hard drugs than the teacher-led group. Thomas W. Valente, Ph.D., associate professor of preventive medicine, is principal investigator of the project.

C. Anderson Johnson, Ph.D., leads the center's training core. Johnson, professor of preventive medicine and IPR director, is co-principal investigator and co-directs the new center.

This drug abuse prevention center grant is the second such grant that IPR has received from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) for research emphasizing the collaboration of investigators from various disciplines to explore substance abuse. In 1999, Johnson and colleagues received funding from NIDA and the National Cancer Institute, both part of the NIH, for the USC Transdisciplinary Tobacco Use Research Center, which studies tobacco use and prevention among ethnically diverse adolescents in California, Hawaii and China.

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Contact: Jon Weiner
jonweine@usc.edu
323-442-2830
University of Southern California
5-Nov-2002