Youth As Champions for Change: “Lead & Seed”

Background:  There is a compelling need for youth-empowered, environmental drug prevention program models for communities that demonstrate comprehensive changes and outcomes.

Program background:  Lead & Seed is a youth empowered, adult supported environmental prevention program which began in 2006 and has been utilized by SAMHSA for Town Hall Meeting curriculum in 2006, 2008 and 2010, (www.stopalcoholabuse.gov).  Lead & Seed is included in the World Health Organization’s “Safe Community Model,” awarded 2010, #214 in the world.  Alutiiq LLC is an Alaskan Native Owned Corporation (ANC) that trains and distributes the program nationally.

Evaluation Methods and Results: A comprehensive, 18-month research and evaluation study. (2009-2010), was conducted by Dr. Pamela Imm, (University of South Carolina), for the youth empowered, adult supported, Lead & Seed environmental program model with middle and high school students, using a pre-post, matched survey design with a 6-month follow-up. There was minimal missing data in the data sets, less than 5%. Data analysis was conducted with all significant values are reported at “p” values corresponding to p < .05, or p < .01.  One-tailed comparisons between observed values and test statistics were used because the study assumed a specific direction of change in knowledge, skills and behavior for the group.    There were 22 rural, urban and suburban communities demonstrating consistent results. The study, implemented in conjunction with SAMHSA, resulted in significant reductions in alcohol, tobacco and other drug use and significant increases in youth efficacy, environmental knowledge, leadership, communication, decision making, advocacy, social marketing campaigns, theory driven logic models, connectivity to peers, community.  Results were consistent with program goals: (1.) Increase leadership, empowerment skills; (2.) Increase youth involvement, mobilization (3.) Improve advocacy, civic engagement; (4.) improve social media use; (5.) increase social marketing campaign skills; (6.) reduce risk factors related to ATOD use, (perception of risk of harm, social disapproval).  The evaluation tools are “cyber friendly” in that data is uploaded to an online data collection base, including environmental changes in policies, practices and procedures and capture assess changes at the individual level and at the population level (e.g., systems-change). 

Conclusions: Many youth prevention strategies focus on changing behavior of individuals through awareness events, school-based programs and family interventions.  These approaches to prevention typically define the problems as one of poor decision-making by individuals.  Consistent reports from substance abuse prevention literature question the outcomes of strategies that are one-dimensional and focus exclusively on changing individual behavior, with disregard for the environmental contexts in which the individual lives, works, and exists.  Research has indicated that the most successful prevention efforts target environmental conditions, such as accessibility and availability of substances, changing community norms, consistent enforcement efforts, and policy changes. Moreover, the involvement of youth as key change agents is seen as critical to engaging youth and communities to advocate, promote and participate in various activities such to prevent high risk behaviors

Implications for research and/or practice:  (1.) Environmental changes can be successfully collected, tracked using online data collection systems (2.) Youth empowered initiatives have successful outcomes (3.) Multiple and comprehensive outcomes can be demonstrated