Session: Innovations in Prevention Interventions with Indigenous Youth and Families (Society for Prevention Research 21st Annual Meeting)

SESSION INTRODUCTION: The goal of this symposium session is to describe the developmental process of three NIH-funded drug prevention efforts focused on indigenous youth and families in two states . This symposium supports the conference theme related to the development and testing of interventions within the prevention cycle, and focuses on populations with significant health disparity issues. This symposium brings together researchers from various institutions in the states of Hawai‘i and Arizona who have actively been pursuing indigenous prevention science over the past decade.

The first paper, “The Development and Preliminary Findings of the Ho‘ouna Pono Drug Prevention Curriculum”, describes how a social/ecological model of culturally grounded prevention was applied to the development of a school-based drug prevention intervention for rural Native Hawaiian youth. The presentation highlights how this model contributes to the development of an indigenous prevention science grounded in culture and region, and provides preliminary evidence toward the efficacy of this approach with Native Hawaiian youth.

The second paper, “Reaching an Invisible Native Population: Implementing a Culturally Adapted Curriculum in Urban Schools“, describes the deep-structure adaptation of the keepin’ it REALdrug prevention curriculum to urban American Indian youth. This presentation describes how resistance skills the original program were systematically aligned with cultural norms and values of American Indian youth of the southwest USA.

The third paper, “The Parenting in 2 Worlds Project: CBPR with Urban American Indian Families”, describes how a cultural adaptation model was applied to the development of a culturally grounded parenting intervention for American Indian families in the Southwest USA. This presentation will describe how community-based participatory research with urban Indian communities was used to develop and test the intervention.

At the conclusion of the presentations, the discussant will summarize the presentations and facilitate a discussion between the presenters and the symposium attendees. This symposium will attract prevention researchers with an interest in the development and testing of empirically based prevention interventions for indigenous youth and families, and contributes to NIH’s overall goal of eliminating health disparities.