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Statewide, 3,400 sixth graders -- roughly a third of public school sixth graders -- are participating in a $3.5-million research experiment, Project BEST. Designed by researchers at the University of Rhode Island, the computerized program aims to guide pre-teens away from smoking and drinking before those risky behaviors take root, as well as encourage them to eat right and exercise.
The program, financed by a five-year grant from the National Institute of Drug Abuse, is being run by URI's Cancer Prevention Research Center, which conducted similar projects for older students and adults in the 1990s that showed improvement, according to the center.
The computer survey asks the students a series of questions and provides support in curbing risky behavior. The students' answers trigger follow-up questions specific to that student. Researchers hope Project BEST's personal approach will help it succeed where other programs targeted toward preventing risky behaviors among middle school students have failed.
"We haven't had a lot of success so far with classroom approaches in health class or with DARE officers talking to kids,"
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PROVO - On his first day running a beer-and-cigarette-free store, Paul Ream said he has heard only one complaint, but lots of praise.
"The complaint was that I shouldn't force my values on others," Ream, owner of Ream's Family Foods, said Friday. But he said he has received a surprising amount of praise for his action.
Customers at the Provo grocery store said they didn't mind that there was no beer on the shelves or cigarettes behind the courtesy desk.
In fact, some said they came to the store Friday for that reason.
"When I saw it in the paper, I said we're going to Ream's," said Nina Childs of Provo, who was shopping with her husband, Ardeen.
Ream decided to stop stocking beer and cigarettes after his 9-year-old daughter, Shyanne, asked him why he sold "drugs" in his store.
When I saw it in the paper, I said we're going to Ream's.Nina Childs of Provo, UT, on Paul Ream's decision to stop stocking beer and cigarettes at his store, Ream's Family Foods.
The HP 2010 objective for this indicator (objective no. 16-17c) is that 99% of pregnant women will abstain from cigarette smoking. Because PRAMS does not collect data on tobacco use during the first or second trimester of pregnancy, for this analysis, abstinence from smoking during pregnancy was defined as abstinence from smoking during the last 3 months of pregnancy. In 2003, prevalence of abstinence from cigarette smoking during the last 3 months of pregnancy ranged from 72.5% in West Virginia to 96.1% in Utah (Table 2). No state achieved the objective for abstinence from smoking during pregnancy. During 2000--2003, prevalence of abstinence from cigarette smoking during pregnancy increased significantly only in Utah (Table 6); for the other states, prevalence of abstinence from smoking during the last 3 months of pregnancy remained relatively unchanged. . . .
The HP 2010 objective for this indicator (objective no. 27-6) is that 30% of smokers will stop smoking during pregnancy. For this analysis, smoking cessation was defined as the report of any cigarette smoking during the 3 months before pregnancy but no cigarette smoking reported during the last 3 months of pregnancy. In 2003, prevalence of smoking cessation during pregnancy ranged from 30.2% in West Virginia to 65.8% in Utah (Table 2). All states achieved the health objective for smoking cessation. During 2000--2003, prevalence of smoking cessation during pregnancy increased significantly (Table 7) in Utah; for the other states, trend analysis indicated that prevalence of smoking cessation remained relatively unchanged. . . .
No state achieved the HP 2010 objectives for three indicators in the preconception period that affect maternal and child health outcomes (intended pregnancy, multivitamin use during the month before pregnancy, and physical abuse during the 12 months before pregnancy). For behaviors in the prenatal period, results were mixed. No state achieved the objective for abstinence from smoking during pregnancy. However, all states included in this analysis achieved the objective for smoking cessation during pregnanc
Smoking prevention programs in junior high or high school have little influence on whether teens choose to light up or not, according to a study published in the March issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.
"Our study shows there is little evidence to suggest that existing school-based smoking prevention programs produce long-term reductions in smoking prevalence among youth," says the study's first author, Sarah Wiehe, M.D., M.P.H., assistant professor of pediatrics, Division of Children's Health Services Research at the Indiana University School of Medicine.
The researchers reviewed eight randomized, controlled smoking prevention trials with follow-up smoking data through at least 12th grade or age 18. Data from the popular Project DARE (Drug Abuse Resistance Education) program were included in the final analysis.
Seven of the studies, including Project DARE, showed no statistically significant difference in smoking prevalence between students enrolled in school based smoking prevention programs and students not enrolled in this type of program. Only one program, Life Skills Program, had fewer smokers at long-term follow-up than in control schools.
One of the Defense Department's top doctors said he applauds any servicemember planning to use the American Cancer Society's 28th Great American Smokeout as their springboard to quit smoking.
The Great American Smokeout, which fell on Nov. 18 this year, is the one day a year to really focus on a very serious problem facing servicemembers, said Dr. David N. Tornberg, deputy assistant secretary of defense for clinical and program policy, in a Nov. 16 Pentagon Channel interview here.
"The health and well-being of our troops ... are of paramount importance to us," he said. "The Great American Smokeout gives that one special day where one significant health risk can be addressed and we can coordinate our activities with the nation at large."
While there are many reasons for the military to want servicemembers who smoke to kick the habit, the most important could be the impact smoking has on readiness.
Tornberg said that on a personal level, smoking reduces an individual's aerobic capacity and consequently, strength, stamina and life expectancy. Smokers also have a higher rate of injury and associated illnesses. That lost time on the job lowers readiness on a departmental level.
An Air Force study revealed some staggering statistics about smoking-related time loss.
But there's a catch: numerous studies across the country, including one in Suffolk two years ago, cast doubt on DARE's effectiveness. Its graduates are no less likely to use drugs than other children, the studies have concluded.
Nevertheless, the program remains enormously popular. So popular, in fact, that any suggestion that it be replaced with a more effective or less expensive program tends to raise howls of protest from parents, school officials and the police.
As a result, Suffolk lawmakers girding to do battle with a projected $250 million budget shortfall in 2005 are reluctant to take any overt jab at DARE, even though it costs the police department nearly $3 million a year. . . .
"The kids like it because they get recognition and having a police officer in the classroom is a novel thing," he said. "And parents whose kids don't have drug problems to begin with think that DARE is responsible. But the real serious problem is that behind all the fun and recognition and hoopla is a valid concept that hasn't been allowed to work because it isn't pounded into these children throughout the educational process. Like anything else, it wears off."
During the last decade DARE has been widely criticized as unproven and unsophisticated. . . .
But the officially endorsed alternatives to DARE aren't necessarily better. Once you remove the shiny packaging and discard the "new and improved" labels, you'll find a product that's disappointingly familiar. The main thing that has changed is the rhetoric. Instead of "Just Say No," you'll hear, "Use your refusal skills." The new programs encourage teachers to go beyond telling kids that drug use is bad. Instead, they tell teenagers to "use your decision making skills" to make "healthy life choices." Since drugs aren't healthy, the choice is obvious: Just say no. . . .
After examining some of the new anti-drug curricula and watching a sampling of them in action, I strongly doubt these programs are winning many hearts and minds. , . . .
Today's anti-drug programs claim to have replaced all the scare tactics of years past with good, solid information about the physiological effects of drug use. But these programs, which are based on the same flawed "scientific" information that adults have been using for years to keep kids off drugs, are a lot like anti-alcohol propaganda from the late 19th and early 20th centuries. . . .
A century ago, kids heard the same warnings about tobacco, another target of the so-called temperance movement. Our Bodies and How We Live (1904) warned that "the mind of the habitual user of tobacco is apt to lose its capacity for study or successful effort." . . .
What all of these programs continue to ignore is the most crucial piece in the drug prevention puzzle -- the kids, and their stubbornly independent reactions to propaganda. They aren't fooled by "decision making" skills or "healthy choices." They know what the teachers expect: Just say no.
The most widely used anti-drug education program in U.S. schools shows little success but an enhancement involving teachers and students appears to be effective at least with boys, according to a recent study.
Researchers at the University of Minnesota said they reached the conclusion after looking at the police-taught Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or D.A.R.E., program and comparing it to "D.A.R.E. Plus" programs, among seventh graders in 24 schools in 1999 and 2000. . .
In the study published Monday in the Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine, the researchers said they found no significant differences between D.A.R.E. only students and those who had no program at all in terms of tobacco, alcohol or marijuana use or violence for both boys and girls later on. . .
"In summary, the D.A.R.E. Plus Project demonstrated that a multicomponent intervention significantly improved the D.A.R.E. middle and junior high school D.A.R.E. curriculum and became an effective intervention for reducing increases in alcohol, tobacco, and multigrid use and victimization among adolescent boys," the study said.
To improve the long-term effects of the hugely popular Drug Abuse Resistance Education program, the 18-year-old organization is trying a new approach. This month, DARE America leaders announced plans to overhaul the program with a new curriculum designed by prevention researchers at the University of Akron in Ohio.
Before changes take place nationwide, DARE will run a pilot program until 2006 in six cities and their suburbs.
The revised curriculum is designed for middle school students rather than elementary school children and will be reinforced by a new ninth-grade unit. Students will spend more time in group discussions and problem-solving activities. DARE officers, in turn, will act more like coaches, encouraging students to challenge social norms on their own. . .
Fester recalls his DARE officer describing a person who might someday offer him drugs. It was always a stranger.
"He didn't tell you it would be one of your friends," said Fester.
The DARE lion, DARE song and DARE essay were all part of the drug-prevention fervor, said other Diablo Valley students. The lessons, they said, might have had more staying power if they hadn't stopped
Joan McCord, co-chairwoman of the National Academy of Sciences panel that issued a stinging report on DARE this week, is one of the people who is concerned about the program hurting the children who participate.
"It's a mistake to assume that you can simply design a program and know in advance whether it will be harmful," says McCord. "I think of those who created thalidomide. They had good intentions, and look what happened. The harm comes from the failure of programs and programs must be evaluated for safety."
She and others assert that politics is what has kept the much-criticized program around for so many years, despite a mountain of evidence contesting its efficacy.
Don Lynam, who issued a report two years ago questioning the effectiveness of DARE, feels vindicated after Thursday's announcement. . .
I think it's a good step, but I'm waiting to see what the details look like. DARE has supposedly gone through changes before. The big difference between what's happening now and what has happened in the past is there's an evaluation component tagged onto this curriculum change -- to see whether or not it is effective. Because one of the things that DARE people say in response to my study is, "Well, that was the old version of DARE. We're using a new and improved version of DARE."
In other words, curriculum changes are a nice way of getting around the fact that your old program didn't work. You just promise that the new one will.