Network Intervention to Prevent Vaping

Summary

Rates of adolescent vaping are increasing rapidly. Current high school student use of electronic vaping products (EVPs) rose from 1.5% in 2011 to 20.8% in 2018 - an increase from 220,000 to 3.05 million adolescent users. Effective, school-based interventions are urgently needed to protect adolescents from initiating or continuing use of electronic vaping products (EVPs). This study leverages a state-supported prevention initiative to test the effectiveness of a promising intervention that trains 8th-9th grade student peer leaders to deliver school-wide vaping prevention campaigns with ongoing adult mentoring. If study hypotheses are supported, the study will provide the first evidence of a school-based preventive intervention that reduces adolescent vaping behaviors, as well as insight into how peer communications can be harnessed to prevent vaping.

Conditions

• Vaping
• Preventive Psychiatry
• Social Networking

Interventions

BEHAVIORAL

Above the Influence-Vaping (ATI-V)

Peer-nominated 8th grade and 9th grade Peer Leaders (PL) will be trained in a half day ATI-V training. Adult Advisors (AA) will attend a half day ATI-V AA training and the PL training. The training day builds leadership skills in the PLs, develops skills for rising above pressure to vape including identification of personal reasons to rise, identification of healthy support people, teaching accurate use statistics, and sharing stories of prior success in rising above negative pressures. The ATI-V team of PLs and AAs then will run four interactive messaging campaigns to reach the rest of the student body. These four campaigns are (1) Introduction to ATI-V and My Reasons to Rise (2) Gain and Loss (3) Who's Got My Back (4) The Facts. Each campaign features a portion in which PLs model healthy norms and behaviors, and a second portion in which all the rest of the students engage in an interactive component to build and demonstrate the target skill.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

  collaborator NIH

• Texas Tech University

  collaborator OTHER

• Claremont Graduate University

  collaborator OTHER

• Penn State University

  collaborator OTHER

• University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill

  collaborator OTHER

• University of Rochester

  lead OTHER

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

12 Years

Max Age

18 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2020-09-01

Primary Completion

2025-02-28

Completion

2025-10-04

Countries

• United States

Study Locations