WITHDRAWN: Effectiveness of Family Evidence-Based Interventions for Girls

Background and Significance: Gender has been a protective factor for substance abuse among females worldwide, hence overall drug use and misuse was historically low among girls and women´s until the past 20 years thus closing the “gender gap” among girls. There is a dearth of literature on effectiveness by gender of Evidence-Based (EB) interventions in substance abuse and delinquency prevention. Hence, it cannot be assumed that existing EB strategies benefits girls as much as they do for boys. Because, girl’s substance use has increased substantially since 1992 in the USA, prevention intervention effective for girls are needed. Few EBIs have been designed specifically for girls because of the assumption that preventive EBIs work for all youth despite few gender sub-group analyses.

Methods: Online search conducted for the UNODC of all drug prevention EBIs listed on government websites in the USA and Europe. This was followed by two other methods: an extensive literature review of EB substance abuse prevention programs followed by a program developer’s survey asking if they have ever done a gender analysis of their EBI and what were the results.

 Results: Results based on the survey conducted for the UNODC found that only 16 of the generic EBIs had ever conducted a gender subgroup analyses. Of those that did a gender analysis, all but one of the family interventions reported positive outcomes for girls, but most of the youth-only interventions did not. The few gender-specific interventions for girls did report positive results.

Discussions/Conclusions: Recommendations for future research include that all EBIs report on gender and ethnic sub-group results and that more gender-specific or adapted EBIs be developed and tested, taking into account and recognizing gender differences in substance use risk, etiology and progression, their varying cultural expressions and to deal with the risk factors that lead to female substance abuse.