Project Alert

Developers

RAND Corporation.

Available

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Format

• Year 7: 11 lessons
• Year 8: 3 booster lessons. 

Summary

This program motivates students against drug use by cultivating new non-use attitudes and beliefs while equipping teenagers with skills and strategies they can identify and resist pressures to use drugs. The program is best delivered over the course of a year with additional booster sessions one year later.

Implementation of the project is streamlined by self-paced online training, web-based and downloadable lesson plans. Program materials include:

• 14 prepared lesson plans and materials
• Eight online interactive student videos
• Twelve projectable classroom posters
• Online teacher training and technical assistance
• An electronic newsletter.

Benefits

• Reduces alcohol problems
• Reduces initial and recent use of cannabis
• Reduces initial and recent use of tobacco
• Improved drug resistance skills
• Improved knowledge and attitudes towards drug use.

Evidence Base

The following evaluations within student samples in the USA support the benefits of the program with the first two years of implementation:

Ellickson, P. L., Tucker, J. S., & Klein, D. J. (2008). Reducing early smokers' risk for future smoking and other problem behavior: insights from a five-year longitudinal study. Journal of Adolescent Health, 43, 394-400.

Longshore, D., Ellickson, P. L., McCaffrey, D. F., & St Clair, P. A. (2007). School-based drug prevention among at-risk adolescents: Effects of ALERT plus. Health Education & Behavior, 34, 651-668.

Ellickson, P. L., McCaffrey, D. F., Ghosh-Dastidar, B., & Longshore, D. L. (2003). New inroads in preventing adolescent drug use: Results from a large-scale trial of project ALERT in middle schools. American Journal of Public Health, 93, 1830-1836.

Longer-term follow-ups 3 years after implementation (Year 10) have indicated that the program effects on use did not persist once the lessons stopped. In addition, an independent replication study found no evidence of significant benefits of the program on substance use or drug-related attitudes:

St. Pierre, T., Osgood, D. W., Mincemoyer, C., Kaltreider, D. L., & Kauh, T. (2005). Results of an Independent Evaluation of Project ALERT Delivered in Schools by Cooperative Extension. Prevention Science, 6, 305-317. 

Ellickson, P. L., Bell, R. M., & McGuigan, K. (1993). Preventing adolescent drug use: Long-term results of a junior high program. American Journal of Public Health, 83, 856-861. 

Project ALERT is included in SAMSHA's National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (USA).