Children who participated in the PROSPER (PROmoting School-community-university Partnerships to Enhance Resilience) program over seven years ago showed lower rates of substance abuse after high school graduation, according to a new study conducted by researchers from Pennsylvania State and Iowa State Universities
PROSPER, a community-based preventive intervention delivery system, is offered to young adolescents during middle school — a pivotal period when exposure to and uptake of substances and other risky behavior begins.
In this latest study, researchers found a 41 percent reduction in lifetime use of methamphetamine within a group of more than 1,900 19-year-olds, randomly selected from the full PROSPER sample of over 11,000 youth who joined the study in 6th grade.