Project Towards No Drug Abuse (TND)

COUNTRY: UNITED STATES

REGION: AMERICAS

Implementer: University of Southern California, Institute for Prevention Research

Partners: Funding from National Institute on Drug Abuse

Program Overview: Project Towards no Drug Abuse uses a class-room based curriculum in an effort to reduce drug use and alcohol consumption among high school students.

Program Design: Based on Motivation-Skills-Decision-Making Model (MSD)¹ which focuses three main drivers of behavior:

1. Motivation variables - these include attitudes, beliefs, and desired
2. Social conversation or control skills - for individuals in high risk groups these are skills which allow formation of bond with individuals from lower risk groups
3. Cognitive processing skills - these are the skills required in order for individuals to exercise a rational decision making process.

Project TND aims to enhance skills in all three of these areas.

The program curriculum is classroom-based with twelve 40-minute sessions, designed to be interactive. (For more information on classroom sessions and content see Sussman, 1996 and Sussman et al., 2002)

Evaluation: 2,468 high school student from 42 schools across southern California participated in three trials to assess the effectiveness of Project TND. In each of the three trials schools were randomly assigned to the intervention or a control condition, where the standard drug/alcohol education curriculum was received. In each school a pre and post intervention survey was used to assess lifetime frequency of alcohol consumption, marijuana use, tobacco use, and use of other hard drugs.

Key findings²: A review of the three trials on Project TND found a number of statistically significant findings:

• Reductions in alcohol consumption and hard drug use were significant across all three trials
• Decreased use of tobacco and marijuana were only significant in one of three trials

Program Website: tnd.usc.edu

References:

1. Sussman, S. (1996). Development of a school-based drug abuse prevention curriculum for high risk youth. Journal of Psychoactive Drugs, 28(2), 169-182.

2. Sussman, S., Dent, C. W., & Stacy, A. W. (2002).Project Towards No Drug Abuse: A review of the findings and future directions. American Journal of Health Behavior, 26(5), 354-365.

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