Drug Use Prevention Among Girls Through a Mother-Daughter Intervention

This study will develop and test drug use prevention strategies for low-income, minority girls. Gender-specific substance use rates, risk and protective factors, and health outcomes highlight the need for interventions aimed at girls. Girls and boys share a number of risk factors, yet some factors are more salient for one gender. Girls and boys may also be affected differently by the same risk factors. Intervention planned for this study emphasizes risk and protective factors that impact girls. Our intervention will build mother-daughter communication and closeness; enhance girls’ self-efficacy and body esteem; nurture girls’ conflict management, problem-solving, stress reduction, and refusal skills; correct perceived norms; build social supports; and establish patterns of parental monitoring and supervision. We hypothesise that girls who receive GSI will have lower 3-year follow-up rates of substance use than girls who receive no intervention.

The study will occur in three phases. In a 12-month preparation phase, we will refine and complete intervention and measurement protocols, recruit subjects and randomly assign girls and mothers to study arms, and pretest girls and mothers. A 12-month implementation phase will initiate field operations of the clinical trial, including intervention delivery, process data collection, and posttests. Follow-up in the last 36 months will involve longitudinal measurements of girls and mothers, booster session development and delivery, and data analyses.