The Health Benefits of Family-Centered Drug Use Prevention Programs

Recent studies at the Center for Family Research at the University of Georgia have demonstrated that, even in populations who experience high levels of SES risk or race-related stressors, only a minority experience indicators of biological weathering. Resources such as supportive family environments functioned as stress buffers for these youths. To increase confidence in our findings that supportive relationships offset biological weathering associated with SES and race-related stressors, we conducted secondary analyses of two randomized prevention trials. Both trials were designed to enhance parenting among rural African American preadolescents and young adults. The Strong African American Families (SAAF) program (Brody et al, 2004) was designed to enhance parenting, strengthen family relationships, and deter drug use. The second prevention trial was the AIM program (Brody et al, 2012). AIM has been shown to enhance family support and deter drug use and the problems it brings, particularly among young adults confronting high levels of contextual risks(Brody et al., 2015). To test the potential health benefits of these prevention programs, we drew blood from the study participants and assayed biomarkers to determine whether participation in these family-centered interventions also reduced indicators of biological weathering that contribute to health disparities. To date, the results show that these programs can ameliorate the effects of contextual risk factors on health-relevant outcomes that are evident at the cellular level and in the brain. SAAF reduces proinflammatory cytokines (Miller et al., 2014), stress hormone levels (Brody et al., (2014), epigenetic aging (Brody et al., 2016), and enhances brain maturation (Brody et al., in press). AIM has been shown to buffer young adults from premature biological aging evident in shorter telomere lengths (Brody et al., (2014). Together, these analyses support the premise that protective processes in African American families deter the development of biological residues of growing up in challenging rural contexts.