Unplugged, a Drug Use Prevention Program: Adaptation and Evaluation of Effectiveness Among Students in Chile

Summary

Substance use and drug related disorders are important public health problems. Alcohol and illicit drug use account for 5.4% of the total burden of disease and the peak has been found in early adulthood (between ages 20 and 30 years). Substance use is one of the leading problems among Chilean adolescents. One out of four 8 th to 12 th graders have smoked cigarettes in the last month. A 35.6% of students (37%, girls; 34.2%, boys) between Year 8 and Year 12 have reported any alcohol use during the last month. It is worrying that a third of 14 years old students report using alcohol in the last month in Chile. Furthermore, two out of three who are using alcohol, report regularly using 5 or more drinks in a row during the last month. Cannabis use among young Chileans has increased in recent years. Today, one out of five students between Year 8 and Year 12 referred cannabis use during the last 30 days. Almost a 20% of students in Year 8 have used cannabis in the last year.

Therefore, is urgent to provide evidence-based drug preventive interventions to the Chilean population, specifically to school students, to tackle this problem and reduce the risk for a more dramatic future health scenario.

The aim of this study is to develop a culturally appropriate version of the Unplugged program to the Chilean culture, and to test its effectiveness among early adolescents in low-income primary schools in Santiago, Chile. This project involves two stages: first, formative work, where the research team will review, adapt and pilot the Spanish version of the program to Chile; and second, the culturally adapted version of Unplugged program will be tested in a single-blind two-arm cluster randomized controlled trial.

At the end of the intervention, investigators expect that students in schools receiving the Chilean version of Unplugged will have a lower proportion of substance use and a lower proportion of students passing from experimental use to regular use of tobacco, alcohol, and cannabis, than in control schools.

Conditions

• Substance Use

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Yo Sé Lo Que Quiero (YSLQQ)

This program is organized in 12 sessions around three themes: * Knowledge and attitudes (sessions 1, 3, 5 and 9): Students reflect on their knowledge of legal and illegal drugs, using critical thinking to obtain an objective assessment of this knowledge. * Intrapersonal skills (sessions 4, 6, 8, 10. 11. and 12): Activities are carried out where students can put themselves in everyday situations and develop skills such as assertiveness, problem solving, among others. * Interpersonal skills (sessions 2 and 7): Students are instructed to practice refusal skills, assertiveness, and analyze coping strategies.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• Comisión Nacional de Investigación Científica y Tecnológica

  collaborator OTHER_GOV

• Universidad de los Andes, Chile

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

10 Years

Max Age

15 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2021-09-01

Primary Completion

2023-03-31

Completion

2023-03-31

Countries

• Chile

Study Locations