Precision Targeting in Prevention:

Benefits of "Critical Hours" Programs for Middle School Youth

"Risk can be transformed into opportunity for our youth by turning their non-school hours into the time of their lives."

--A Matter of Time: Risk and Opportunity in the Nonschool Hours
Carnegie Council on Adolescent Development, 1992

To optimize the opportunity to reduce alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use by Indiana children and adolescents, the afterschool programs funded by the Indiana Division of Mental Health are required to include both focused prevention activities and supportive prevention activities from a pre-approved list of activities for which there is solid evidence of prevention effectiveness. Local program developers are given wide latitude to select activities from these pre-approved lists, but must select program strategies that have been proven to be effective.

Carefully-designed afterschool prevention programs that are research-based and theory-driven have been shown to create positive benefits in participating youth, including reductions in use of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs. Some examples of these benefits, established by peer-reviewed evaluation studies, include:

• When afterschool prevention programs, run by Boys and Girls Clubs, were started in selected public housing developments in New York, drug use, presence of crack cocaine use, police reports of drug activity all decreased signifcantly. Drug activity decreased 22%, juvenile arrests dropped 13%, and vandalism in the public housing developments decreased 12.5%, and parental involvement increased, compared with public housing developments that were not selected to implement the afterschool programs. The program included structured, adult-supervised recreation and youth development activities combined with a focused prevention activity, Smart Moves, developed by the Boys & Girls Clubs specifically for non-classroom settings.
  Schinke SP, Orlandi MA, Cole KC. "Boys and Girls Clubs in Public Housing Developments: Prevention Services for Youth at Risk," Journal of Community Psychology, OSAP Special Issue, pp.118-128, 1992.
• In another evaluation of Boys and Girls Club afterschool prevention programs in 14 clubs across the country, use of marijuana, alcohol, cigarettes, and other drugs was significantly lower than in members of Boys and Girls Clubs that did not offer the afterschool prevention programs. Again, the afterschool programs consisted of supportive prevention activities such as adult-supervised recreation and youth development activities combined with a focused prevention activity, Stay SMART, the precursor to the SMART Moves program.
  St.Pierre TL, Kaltreider DL, Mark MM, Aikin KJ. "Drug Prevention in a Community Setting: A Longitudinal Study of the Relative Effectiveness of a Three-year Primary Prevention Program in Boys and Girls Clubs across the Nation," Journal of Community Psychology 20(6):673-706, 1992.; Kaltreider DL, St.Pierre TL. "Beyond the Schools: Strategies for Implementing Successful Drug Prevention Programs in Community Youth-Serving Organizations," Journal of Drug Education 25(3):223-237, 1995.
• The Search Institute has shown that positive youth development programs designed to serve ALL youth in a community have positive benefits which include acquisition of new developmental assets that are correlated with reductions in alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use, as well as other risk-taking behaviors. The positive benefits have a disproportionately larger impact upon the highest-risk youth in the community.
  Search Institute. Healthy Communities: Healthy Youth. Minneapolis: Search Institute, 1993.
• In a review of the literature on resilency, McMillan and Reed observed that even very high-risk youth benefit from participating in universal prevention programs that provide positive use of afterschool time. These youth proorted positive changes in virtually all risk-taking variables, including drug use, acasdemic failure, crime involvement, and anti-social activity. The programs were designed to serve ALL youth and were NOT special programs for at-risk youth.
  McMillan JH, Reed DF, "A Qualitative Study of Resilient At-risk Students." paper presented at the 1993 annual meeting of the American Educational Research Association, cited in McMillan JH, Reed DF. "At Risk Students and Resiliency: Factors Contributing to Academic Success." Clearing House 67(3):137-140, 1994.
• An evaluation of an afterschool prevention/mentoring program sponsored by a YMCA, that involved recreation, youth development, and structured prevention activities, showed positive results in both the elementary school youth and in their adolescent peer mentors. Reductions were reported in problem behaviors, including delinquency, substance abuse, teenage pregnancy, and school dropout.
  O'Donnell J, Michalak, EA. "Inner-city Youths Helping Children: After-School Programs to Promote Bonding and Reduce Risk." Social Work in Education 19(4):231-242, 1997.
• Afterschool programs that provide help with homework, academic enrichment activities, and one-on-one tutoring have repeatedly been shown to improve math, reading, and general academic performance by 25% to 60%.
  U.S. Department of Education. Safe and Smart: Making the After-School Hours Work for Kids, 1998.
• In an evaluation of afterschool programs in New Hampshire, 44% of youth reported that they developed a new educational talent or skill and three-fourths developed some new interest or skill that they did not have before the program.
  Gregory PJ, Youth Opportunities Unlimited: Improving Outcomes for Youth Through After School Care. Manchester, NH: University of New Hampshire, 1996.

Last Updated: September 5, 1998 - wjb