This exploratory study sought to determine if a popular school-based drug prevention program might be effective in schools that are making adequate yearly progress (AYP). Thirty-four schools with grades 6 through 8 in 11 states were randomly assigned either to receive Project ALERT (n = 17) or to a control group (n = 17); of these, 10 intervention…

Epidemiological studies have identified recent declines in specific types of adolescent substance use. The current study examined whether these declines varied among youth with and without a history of interpersonal victimization or posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Data for this study come from two distinct samples of youth (12-17 years of…

This article examines a cluster of health topics that are frequently selected by students in lower division classes. Topics address issues relating to addictive substances, including alcohol and tobacco, eating disorders, obesity, and dieting. Analysis of the topics examines their interrelationships and organization in the reference literature.…

Progress in reducing youth smoking may depend on developing improved methods to communicate with higher risk youth. This study explored the potential of smoking prevention messages based on the Elaboration Likelihood Model (ELM) to address these needs. Structured evaluations of 12 smoking prevention messages based on three strategies derived from…

Purpose: There are inconsistent research findings regarding the impact of rurality on adolescent alcohol, tobacco, and illicit substance use. Therefore, the current study reports on the effect of rurality on alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drug use among adolescents in 2 state representative samples in 2 countries, Washington State (WA) in the…

Little is known about the relative predictive utility of maternal characteristics and parenting skills on the development of girls' disruptive behavior. The current study used five waves of parent- and child-report data from the ongoing Pittsburgh Girls Study to examine these relationships in a sample of 1,942 girls from age 7 to 12 years.…

Even as the rate of smoking in the U.S. population overall has decreased dramatically during the last four decades, people with mental illness continue to use tobacco at alarmingly high rates. In the last two years, national initiatives have developed to address smoking within this population, yet there has not been an attempt to understand the…

A multilevel analysis of cross-sectional data from a survey involving 1941 pupils (in grades 10 and 11) and policy indicators developed from interviews with staff from 45 secondary schools in Wales examined the hypotheses that pupil smoking prevalence would be associated with: restrictive staff and pupil smoking policies; dissemination of school…

Neurocognitive disturbances suggesting a frontal lobe dysfunction have been observed in pathological gamblers and alcohol dependents. Given that a high homocysteine level has been suggested to be a mediating factor in alcohol-related cognitive decline, we have determined homocysteine and cobalamine in cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) obtained from 11…

This occasional paper presents national demographic subgroup data for the 1975-2015 Monitoring the Future (MTF) national survey results on 8th, 10th, and 12th graders' use of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco. MTF is funded by the National Institute on Drug Abuse at the National Institutes of Health under a series of investigator-initiated, competitive…

Poor academic performance during childhood predicts later adverse outcomes, and could be targeted for improvement if detected early. This study used population-based record linkage to examine the association between early life risk factors and academic achievement at two different stages of development using two different cohorts: a kindergarten…

The "Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report" ("MMWR") Series is prepared by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Data presented by the Notifiable Disease Data Team and 122 Cities Mortality Data Team in the weekly "MMWR" are provisional, based on weekly reports to CDC by state health departments. This…

Cigarette smoking has steadily declined among adolescents during the last fifteen years, although use of some tobacco products, like cigars, has seen recent increases. However, large numbers of teens continue to use tobacco products. This "Adolescent Health Highlight" presents key research findings; describes prevalence and trends; illustrates…

A medical school at a Southeastern university implemented a tobacco free policy to promote a healthy environment for its employees, patients, and visitors. Eighteen months post policy implementation, undergraduate students in the Department of Health Education and Promotion evaluated the satisfaction, awareness, and perceived…

This article investigates three types of stage-sequential growth mixture models in the structural equation modeling framework for the analysis of multiple-phase longitudinal data. These models can be important tools for situations in which a single-phase growth mixture model produces distorted results and can allow researchers to better understand…