Municipal needs assessment and development of a community-based program to prevent alcohol use among adolescents

• Grant number: 23/16702-6
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Post-Doctoral
• Start date: February 01, 2024
• End date: January 31, 2026
• Field of knowledge: Health Sciences - Collective Health - Preventive Medicine
• Agreement: Global Alliance for Chronic Diseases (GACD)
• Principal Investigator: Zila van der Meer Sanchez Dutenhefner
• Grantee: Luis Eduardo Soares dos Santos
• Host Institution: Escola Paulista de Medicina (EPM). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus São Paulo. São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Associated research grant: 22/03145-9 - Reducing alcohol use among adolescents through a community-based multicomponent intervention: an implementation research approach, AP.TEM

Abstract

Alcohol is one of the main risk factors responsible for the increase in chronic non-communicable diseases worldwide. There are several alcohol use prevention programs that have been evaluated and demonstrated an effect on reducing the use and initiation of alcohol use among adolescents. Community-based multicomponent interventions promote more consistent and long-term effects. These complex strategies are generally composed of a school prevention program (individual effect), a family program (family effect) and environmental strategies (community effect). In Brazil, school and family programs have been adapted and evaluated, but they are implemented in isolation, without community integration and without any environmental action. Furthermore, these programs have implementation and sustainability problems. Implementation research is used in these contexts to develop, implement and disseminate locally adapted programs. The purpose of this study is to develop and evaluate a sustainable multicomponent intervention in partnership with stakeholders in a small municipality in the state of São Paulo through implementation research based on the WHO framework. The study will use a mixed methods approach to identify the municipality's readiness for intervention, awareness raising activities and community co-creation of a multi-component intervention based on previously evaluated experiences in Brazil. After the diagnosis phase, there will be a cultural adaptation of the European Universal Prevention Curriculum and its evaluation as an instrument to raise awareness among managers about the need for preventive interventions against alcohol use among adolescents. After this phase, there will be co-creation and evaluation of the intervention in a phased manner. The results will fill the gap in effective actions to prevent alcohol use, developing the strategy based on active participation and interaction between researchers and stakeholders, based on implementation science. (AU)