U.S. Department of Justice Office of Justice Programs, Innovation - Partnerships – Safer Neighborhoods Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) Serving Children, Families and Communities OJJDP Deinstitutionalization of Status Offenders

SPORT

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Intervention:
SPORT is a brief, multihealth behavior intervention that integrates physical activity and alcohol use prevention messages for high school–age adolescents. The SPORT program encourages adolescents to take part in multiple healthy behaviors, such as participating in sports, engaging in other physical activity, ensuring healthy eating habits, and getting adequate sleep, while avoiding alcohol and drug use. The program was initially developed by funding from the National Institutes of Health.

The strategies used in the different components of SPORT are based on the Behavior-Image Model, which asserts that positive personal and social images serve as key motivators for health development and that this allows for an integration of healthy promoting and healthy risk-prevention habits within a single intervention. For example, in the sport/physical activity section of the program, one message delivered to adolescents says the following: “[S]ports and physical activities are fun, help you look trim and strong, feel good about yourself, give you lots of energy, and can help you do better in school. However, an active lifestyle and alcohol do not mix. Using too much alcohol can hurt your performance in sports, physical activities, and school. It can also have a negative impact on your health and your relationships with friends and family” (Werch et al. 2005, 215). In addition, the program framework relies on multiple contemporary theories and conceptual models, such as the Multicomponent Motivational Stages model, Social Cognitive Theory, the Health Belief Model, the Theory of Planned Behavior, the Behavioral Self-Control Theory, and Social Bonding Theory.

The SPORT intervention consists of an in-person health behavior screen; a one-on-one consultation; a take-home fitness prescription emphasizing adolescent health-promoting behaviors, alcohol use risk, and protective factors; and a flyer mailed to the home that reinforces key content provided during the consultation. The brief, seven-item Health and Fitness Screen was developed to provide individualized feedback on six health behavior-related areas. It is administered to students individually during regularly scheduled school hours just before implementing the fitness consultation. The screen consists primarily of yes/no response items measuring the following behavioral areas: sport and physical activity, exercise, physical activity norms (i.e., social support from friends and family), breakfast and nutrition, sleep and rest, and alcohol initiation and use.

SPORT Fitness consultations are administered to students using a standardized protocol designed to provide tailored, scripted communications by trained fitness specialists to adolescents one on one. The consultation is implemented in less than 30 minutes during regular school hours. The prevention communications promote an active lifestyle, emphasize the conflict between such a lifestyle and consuming alcohol, and portray an image of youths as active and fit, with alcohol use as counterproductive to achieving this image. At the conclusion of the personal consultation, a take-home fitness prescription is provided, with recommendations for the adolescents to set goals for sleep, nutrition, physical activity, and alcohol use.

Finally, a one-page flyer is mailed out to students 1 week after the fitness consultations that reinforces the prevention messages provided during the one-on-one consultations.

Fitness specialists who administer the consultations can consist of various types of health care professionals, including nurses and certified health education specialists. The specialists should participate in a 2-day training course. The training sessions include demonstrations, role-playing, and feedback on how to implement the screens, consultations, and prescriptions. Fitness specialists are also given a take-home practice assignment in which they tape-record a practice session and receive feedback during the second day of training.

Evaluation Methodology:
Study 1
Werch and colleagues (2005) conducted a randomized controlled trial to test the effectiveness of the SPORT program. A total of 604 students (335 9th graders and 269 11th graders) from a suburban high school in Florida participated in the study. The sample was randomly assigned by computer to either the intervention group (n=302) or the control group (n=302). The intervention group participated in the SPORT program, while the control group received two commercially prepared generic alcohol prevention and health promotion print materials.

The average age of the total sample was 15.24 years, with more than half (56 percent) female. The racial/ethnic breakdown of the sample was 51.0 percent white, 21.5 percent African American, and 27.5 percent from other ethnic groups combined. There were no significant differences between the groups, except on measures of family alcohol/drug problems. A greater proportion of control group adolescents (42.7 percent) reported a family alcohol or drug problem, compared with intervention group adolescents (34.9 percent).

Baseline data was collected at the beginning of the fall semester 2002. Postintervention data was collected 3 months after the implementation of the program (during the spring semester 2003) and again 12 months after the baseline (during the fall semester 2003). The Youth Alcohol and Health Survey was used to collect data on alcohol and drug consumption, risk and protective factors associated with alcohol use, and exercise habits. Alcohol consumption was measured by items adapted from previous substance abuse prevention research. Questions were asked about frequency and quantity of alcohol use, heavy alcohol use, negative consequences experienced, and initiation of alcohol use. Questions about drug use behaviors asked about frequency of cigarette smoking and marijuana use and initiation of cigarettes and marijuana use. Questions also were asked about physical activity, relating to the objective of the program.

MANCOVAs were used to test the primary objective of examining the efficacy of the intervention at both 3- and 12-month follow-ups, with baseline scores serving as covariates. First alcohol use was analyzed, then risk/protective factors for alcohol use, and finally drug use behaviors.

Evaluation Outcome:
Study 1
Overall, the evaluation of SPORT by Werch and colleagues (2005) found mixed results. There were some significant positive effects found at 3 months for alcohol use, but some of those effects disappeared by the 12-month follow-up. Also, there appeared to be a significant program effect on cigarette use but no effect on marijuana use.

Alcohol Use
At 3 months postintervention, there were several significant positive effects supporting the efficacy of the SPORT intervention. Among the alcohol consumption behaviors, there was significantly less 30-day frequency, 30-day quantity, and 30-day heavy use for students receiving the SPORT intervention than among the control group. Significantly less alcohol use initiation was evident for intervention students than for control students. There were also significant differences on measures of both stage of initiation and length of alcohol use. Intervention students also scored better on some measures of risk and protective factors related to alcohol use.

By the time of the 12-month follow-up, some of the significant effects that were found at the 3-month follow-up had disappeared. There were no significant differences on measures of 30-day frequency, quantity, and heavy use of alcohol. For measures of alcohol initiation, the length of alcohol use differed significantly between the groups, with intervention students using alcohol for a briefer period than control students. However, the overall measure of alcohol initiation and the stage of alcohol initiation did not differ significantly. For alcohol protective and risk factors, intervention students still scored significantly better than control group students on some measures.

Drug Use
At the 3-month follow-up, SPORT intervention group students reported significantly less 30-day cigarette use, but there was no difference in reported 30-day marijuana use. There were also no significant differences between the groups on measures of drug initiation.

By the 12-month follow-up, intervention group students still reported significantly fewer drug behaviors for cigarette smoking, and there were significant differences on measures of drug initiation: the intervention group youths were less advanced than control youths in their stage of initiation of cigarette smoking. However, the SPORT intervention did not appear to have any effect on marijuana frequency and initiation at either follow-up period.

Exercise
At 3 months, the SPORT intervention group was significantly more likely to report engaging in moderate physical activity, compared with the control group, but there was no difference on measures of vigorous physical activity. At 12 months, there were no significant differences on any measures of exercise.

References:
Werch, Chudley E. Chad, Michele J. Moore, Carlo C. DiClemente, Rhonda Bledsoe, and Edessa Jobli. 2005. “A Multihealth Behavior Intervention Integrating Physical Activity and Substance Use Prevention for Adolescents.” Prevention Science 6(3):213–26.

 
Program Specification:
Program Type:
Alcohol and Drug Therapy / Education
Classroom Curricula
Leadership and Youth Development
Ethnicity:
African American
White
Other Ethnicity
Gender:
Both
Age: High School/Young Adult: 14 to 21 years
Target Settings:
Suburban
Problem Behaviors:
Alcohol,Tobacco and Other Drug Use
ATOD/Underage Drinking
DSO Strategies:
Direct Services
DSO Intervention Types:
Prevention
Core Requirements:
Deinstitutionalization of Status Offenders (DSO)
 
Additional Information:
Endorsements:

Status:

Program is in operation at this time.

Performance Measures:
Suggested OJJDP Performance Measures for the Program Types(s):
Contact Information:
Program Developer:
Chudley Werch
Brief Programs for Health, LLC
3595 Forest Bend Terrace
Jacksonville, FL 32224
Phone: 904.472.5022

Email: chadwerch@yahoo.com

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OJJDP Deinstitutionalization of Status Offenders Best Practices Database
The OJJDP Deinstitutionalization of Status Offenders Best Practices Database  was created and developed by Development Services Group
under Cooperative Agreement #2008-JF-FX-0072.