The time budgets of a population of youth provide important information about their daily experience and socialization. This study reports data on the time budgets of a sample of 253 urban African American poor to working- and middle-class 5th-8th graders in Chicago. These youth were found to spend less time in school than other postindustrial adolescent populations, but spent no less time doing homework than White suburban U.S. young adolescents. They spent large quantities of time at home and with their families--at rates comparable to rates for young adolescents in a society with collectivist values like India. Unlike with other populations, early adolescence was not associated with major age changes in time allocations. Amount of time in schoolwork did not differ by grade, and amount of time with family did not show the decline with age that has been found for European American suburban adolescents.

Contexts of risk for and protection from exposure to violence were identified and the relation of exposure to violence to delinquent behaviors and symptoms of trauma was examined. Using the Experience Sampling Method (ESM), the immediate daily experience of risky and protective contexts was examined. One hundred sixty-seven African American 6th-, 7th-, and 8th-grade children from urban neighborhoods carried watches and booklets for 1 week. Structural equation modeling supported the hypotheses that more time in risky contexts and less time in protective contexts was related to more exposure to violence. Exposure to violence partially mediated the relation of time in protective and risky contexts to delinquent behaviors, assessed with the Juvenile Delinquency Scale and the Child Behavior Checklist, and distress levels, assessed by a posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) score.

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Suicide is the 2nd leading cause of death for youth aged 10 to 24. Research informed prevention efforts have the opportunity to decrease risk for suicidal ideation and behavior before it is manifested. Indeed, there is a small body of research findings demonstrating both proximal and distal effects of preventive interventions delivered in childhood and adolescence on suicidal ideation and/or behavior. These efforts build off of other secondary analyses of prevention research that has demonstrated benefits for multiple types of youth outcomes. This supplement provides ‘proof of concept’ that family-based preventive interventions aimed at reducing a number of risk factors for suicide (e.g., substance use, externalizing and internalizing behavior) can prevent suicidal ideation and behaviors.

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Notable increases in youth mental health problems combined with strains on the already stretched mental health workforce raise concerns that there will be an ensuing increase in youth suicide thoughts, behaviors, and even deaths. Schools are recognized as crucial settings for youth mental health support and suicide prevention activities, yet schools also face staff shortages and ever-increasing responsibilities for student well-being. Evidence is emerging that prevention programs originally designed to improve problem-solving skills and social-emotional functioning in youth have demonstrated downstream, “crossover effects,” that is, unanticipated benefits, on youth suicidal behavior. Relatively little research on crossover effects has been conducted within school settings, despite the strong potential for commonly administered programs to have an impact on later suicide risk. We review key suicide risk factors and their proposed mechanisms of action; we also discuss factors that may protect against suicide risk. We then identify upstream prevention programs targeting the same factors and mechanisms; these programs may hold promise for downstream, crossover effects on youth suicide risk. This paper is intended to provide a framework to help researchers, practitioners, and policymakers as they consider how to prevent youth suicide using existing school-based resources. Rigorous investigation of upstream prevention programs is urgently needed to determine ideal approaches schools and communities can deploy to prevent youth suicide.

The mission of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) is to lead the nation in bringing the power of science to bear on drug abuse and addiction. Within NIDA, the Prevention Research Branch (PRB) supports a developmentally grounded program of research on the prevention of initiation of drug use, progression to abuse and dependence, and transmission of drug-related HIV infection. This research involves the use of rigorous scientific methods to test theoretically derived hypotheses to advance our understanding of the science of prevention within diverse populations and settings. Studies that support this purpose include: investigations of cognitive, behavioral, and social processes as they relate to the development of novel prevention approaches; tests of the efficacy and effectiveness of newly developed and/or modified (adapted) prevention programs; studies of services research questions on the processes associated with the selection, adoption, adaptation, implementation, sustainability, and cost-effectiveness of science-based interventions; and the development of methodologies appropriate for studying complex aspects of prevention science. These programs of research are intended to provide pathways toward the discovery of population-level approaches for the prevention of drug abuse and dependence, drug-related problems (such as mental health, interpersonal violence, criminal involvement, and lost productivity), and drug-related diseases and disorders (e.g. HIV/AIDS, hepatitis B, and C, or comorbid drug and psychiatric disorders) across the life course.The services research component of the PRB portfolio has its origins in the 1992 legislation that authorized the creation of NIDA as one of the NIH research institutes. That authorization mandated a budget set aside for the conduct of prevention-and treatment-services research. Initially, the majority of services research focused on treatment. However, the development and testing of efficacious and effective drug abuse interventions using randomized controlled trials led to discussions of how to promote the wide-scale implementation and dissemination of prevention interventions. Early prevention-services research questions addressed the barriers and enhancers to wide-scale dissemination through existing and created service systems. Over time, this portfolio has become both larger and more sophisticated, partly through requests for application (RFA) initiatives to promote an understanding of programmatic-level questions and systems-or implementation-level questions related to moving evidencebased interventions (EBIs) into wide-scale implementation. There also was a growing understanding that for largescale implementation and dissemination to occur, a thorough grasp of what works in specific contexts and locales and the processes that contribute to decision-making, selection, adoption, adaption, implementation, evaluation, financing and sustainability of EBIs was needed. Moreover, partnerships between researchers and community stakeholders/practitioners were seen...

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