WHO Collaborative Study on Alcohol Education and Young People: Outcomes of a Four-Country Pilot Study

Abstract

In 1985 the Division of Mental Health, World Health Organization, Geneva, convened a group of investigators from centers in four countries--Australia, Chile, Norway, Swaziland--to participate in a pilot study on the efficacy of school-based alcohol education. The goal of the educational program was to delay onset and minimize involvement of alcohol use among 13- to 14-year-old adolescents. Twenty-five schools in the four countries, representing middle- and lower-class populations, were randomly assigned to peer-led education, teacher-led education, or a control condition. The educational program was derived from social-psychological theory and etiological research on adolescent alcohol use. The program focused on the social and environmental influences to drink alcohol and skills to resist those influences. It consisted of five lessons over 2 months. Baseline and posttest data measured alcohol use knowledge, attitudes, skills, and friends' drinking patterns. Data were collected immediately prior to and 2 months following the educational program. The data converge on the finding that peer-led education appears to be efficacious in reducing alcohol use across a variety of settings and cultures.

Peer‐led interventions to prevent tobacco, alcohol and/or drug use among young people aged 11–21 years: a systematic review and meta‐analysis

“…Taken together with the finding that interventions that included a booster session were more effective than those without 30, 31, 32, 51, the data suggest that the repeated communication of health messages over an extended time‐period may have a more pronounced impact on the behaviour of young people.…”

“…A total of 796 unique studies were retrieved, and from these, 25 eligible papers were identified, representing 17 unique studies (eight were papers reporting on the duplicate studies) 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51. Ten of these unique studies could be included in the quantitative synthesis relating to tobacco smoking; six could be included in quantitative syntheses relating to alcohol; and three were synthesized in relation to cannabis use.…”

“…Approximately half of the studies (n=9 of 17, 52%) targeted tobacco smoking and most were conducted in the United States . The remaining studies were conducted in the United Kingdom 19, Australia 35, Norway 39, Spain 36, Poland and Romania 54, while a multi‐centre study was conducted in Australia , Norway , Chile and Swaziland 51. A number of studies targeted young people aged 12–13 years ( n  = 8), while four studies targeted young people aged 13–18 and most were conducted in the school setting.…”

“…In eight studies 19, 20, 33, 34, 35, 37, 39, 52, peers of a similar age were nominated by their classmates, while in four studies, older‐age peers were selected by staff or researchers 32, 36, 51, 53. In other programmes, PLs either volunteered 31, 36, 38 or the age or method of selection was unclear.…”

“…The fixed‐effect model produced a similar result (OR = 0.79, 95% CI = 0.66–0.96, P  = 0.017). Sensitivity analysis, which excluded one study for which assumptions were made to facilitate analysis 51 altered the effect estimate, however (OR = 0.85, 0.66–1.08, P  = 0.191; I 2  = 7.4%, χ 2  = 4.84, P  = 0.304), while meta‐analysis of unadjusted estimates also gave a null result ( n  = 597 young people in 20 schools; Fig. 3).…”