Mohala Na Pua: Community-driven Drug Prevention

Among all ethnic groups in Hawai'i, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander youth report the highest rates of substance use, and need for substance use treatment . With the high prevalence of substance use and health disparities among Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander (NHPI) communities, research continues to emphasize the need to implement evidence-based prevention programs for youth that are culturally adapted or grounded for indigenous populations. The current five phase, mixed-methods design study aims to use a community-based participatory research approach to implement a culturally grounded, school-based substance use prevention program, Ho'ouna Pono, for NHPI youth across middle/intermediate schools (6th - 8th) in the Windward District of Hawai'i State Department of Education (HIDOE). The current program, Ho'ouna Pono, is a nine-lesson, culturally grounded, video-based, and teacher-delivered substance use prevention curriculum developed on Hawai'i island to build drug resistance skills for middle school students (see Table 3 for specific lesson content). There are three additional modules that are currently being developed. Past program efficacy trials have found statistically significant changes in cigarette/e-cigarette and hard drug use among Native Hawaiian youth on Hawai'i Island, therefore, the research team is interested in evaluating if the intervention will have the same clinical outcome effect with NHPI youth on other islands. The study focuses on understanding youth substance use and resistance skills prior to and upon completion of the culturally grounded substance use prevention curriculum. The team will be evaluating the program's effects on students' resistance skills development, drug use behaviors, as well as other clinical outcomes data of the intervention, such as drug use behaviors and the utilization of resistance skills. The overarching research questions are: * What changes in drug use behaviors are observed among students upon completion of the program? * What drug resistance strategies did students use upon completion of the program?