Nearly all states and the District of Columbia have policies requiring schools to address prevention of alcohol or drug use and abuse in high school health education curricula, according to National Association of State Boards of Education's (NASBE's) State Health Policy Database. But with the added concerns about the pandemic's impact on youth…

Scholars and researchers are increasingly calling attention to the need for community-based coalitions to become more inclusive of local residents and engage those most directly affected by the issues. One population, however, often remains the recipient of services as opposed to partners or leaders in community change initiatives: youth. Over the…

Understanding factors that foster resilience and buffer against the negative psychological impact of COVID-19 is critical to inform efforts to promote adjustment, reduce risk, and improve care, particularly for adolescents with neurodevelopmental disorders. This prospective longitudinal study addresses this gap by investigating the impact of the…

Children in child welfare protective custody (e.g., foster care) are known to have increased health concerns compared to children not in protective custody. The poor health documented for children in protective custody persists well into adulthood; young adults who emancipate from protective custody report poorer health, lower quality of life, and…

A small portion of Americans account for a disproportionate amount of the incidences of sexually transmitted infection observed over a short period of time. Studies with adults have begun to characterize this population, yet there is very little data on adolescent sexually transmitted infection repeaters (STIR). This study explores characteristics…

Enhancing the delivery quality of school-based, evidence-based prevention programs is one key to ensuring uniform program effects on student outcomes. Program evaluations often focus on content dosage when implementing prevention curricula, however, less is known about implementation quality of prevention content, especially among teachers who may…

Service-learning experiences for college students are increasing in popularity. Although youth mentoring is thought to be a significant service-learning experience for students, data in this area are lacking. This study evaluates a unique school-based service-learning mentoring experience at a midsized Midwestern university. Data were collected…

Rural adolescents are at risk for early initiation and problematic substance use, but to date few studies have examined the rural context of substance use. To better understand substance offers in the rural context, semi-structured interviews were conducted with 118, 12- to 19-year-old adolescents (M = 13.68, SD = 1.37) from Appalachian, rural…

Survey research was used to explore the beliefs of 963 staff members regarding the myths to treating tobacco dependence and the integration of tobacco dependence into substance abuse treatment programs. The staff represented a mixture of residential, outpatient, and prevention-based gender-specific (women only) treatment centers throughout Ohio.…

This study described mental health and substance use referral practices of resident assistants (RAs). Interviews were conducted with 48 RAs at three campuses. RAs generally had positive attitudes toward helping residents, and believed that existing norms supported their referral actions. However, many perceived referring residents to be…

The United States is a vehicle-dependent society and allows teens to obtain drivers licenses at age 16 or younger. Many factors have been linked to teen risky driving behaviors that resulted in teens receiving their first citations. This was the first study to investigate parental management of teens after they received their first citations…

This retrospective case study assessed the influence of item non-response error on subsequent response to questionnaire items assessing adolescent alcohol and marijuana use. Post-hoc analyses were conducted on survey results obtained from 4,371 7th to 12th grade students in Ohio in 2005. A skip pattern design in a conventional questionnaire…

Although afterschool programs for children have been operating for decades in some communities, the afterschool movement--the great national awakening to the opportunity afterschool offers--is just a few years old. As public demand for afterschool has grown, so has the demand for accountability. That is particularly true in afterschool programs…

Significant barriers exist to the implementation of evidence-based practices into routine mental health and substance abuse settings. This paper discusses the role and function of technical assistance centers to help support the implementation process using, as a guide, the experience of the Ohio Substance Abuse and Mental Illness Coordinating…

This study provides new evidence regarding the relation of coerced care to posttreatment substance use and addiction severity while controlling for two important factors: readiness to change and addiction severity at admission to treatment. The initial study sample consisted of 289 people who agreed to participate in a prospective study of…