Session: Socio-Environmental Risks for American Indian and White Adolescents: Epidemiological and Etiological Results from the Prevention Trial in the Cherokee Nation (Society for Prevention Research 23rd Annual Meeting)

Despite advances in prevention science and practice in recent decades, the U.S. continues to struggle with significant alcohol-related risks and consequences among youth, especially among vulnerable rural and American Indian youth. The Prevention Trial in the Cherokee Nation is a partnership between prevention scientists and Cherokee Nation Behavioral Health to create, implement, and evaluate a new, integrated community-level intervention designed to prevent underage drinking and associated negative consequences among American Indian and other youth living in rural high-risk underserved communities. Six key research design elements optimize causal inference and experimental evaluation of intervention effects, including purposive selection of towns, random assignment to study condition, a controlled interrupted time-series design, nested cohorts as well as repeated cross-sectional observations, a factorial design crossing two conceptually distinct interventions, and multiple comparison groups.  The study involved six rural communities and their high school populations located within the 14-county jurisdictional service area of the Cherokee Nation. The poster symposium will highlight epidemiological and etiological results from five baseline waves of a 15-minute alcohol risk assessment survey with high school students, as well as 10 baseline waves of alcohol purchase attempts. Results presented in the seven poster presentations offer rich information to inform prevention development and planning for culturally diverse, rural and underserved communities.