The Role of Positive Youth Development in the Prevention of Alcohol and Substance Abuse

This presentation will describe the theoretical framework, long-term follow-up, and future effectiveness and dissemination plans for the Bridges Program (Bridges). Bridges was designed for middle school students in low-income communities to build youth and family competencies and reduce risk for substance abuse, academic, and mental health problems. A randomized trial with Mexican American youth showed multiple long-term benefits, including reduced binge drinking, marijuana use, alcohol abuse disorder, number of sexual partners, and mental health symptoms and disorders in late adolescence and young adulthood.

Bridges was conceptualized from the perspective of positive youth development, a movement in prevention science that represented a shift in how youth problems were addressed in the field. According to the positive developmental framework (Lerner et al., 2009) children naturally possess strengths and the capacity for positive developmental outcomes, and this potential can be realized when there is alignment between these strengths and the resources for healthy development present in their environments. For minority populations in particular, PYD represents an important and significant shift from one that has focused almost exclusively on deficits and risks to one that is focused on the positive growth and inherent potential of minority youth, families and communities (García Coll et al., 2000; Gaylord-Harden, et al., 2012; Guerra & Bradshaw, 2008). What follows naturally from this shift is to question how children’s developmental contexts and the policies that shape these contexts can be structured or improved to maximize this potential. What is needed, rather, is to ensure the basic conditions for positive development are made accessible and equitable for all children and youth (Gonzales, 2017)? Thus, a key consideration in the design of the Bridges program was to address environmental conditions that block optimal development for this population and to integrate cultural resources and culturally-informed developmental assets that enhance integration of Latino youth within ethnic and mainstream cultural contexts.. In this presentation, we will review these competencies, intervention strategies used to affect them, and evidence from a longitudinal follow-up showing that PYD uniquely accounts for the program’s long-term preventive benefits.