Community partnership to affect substance abuse among Native American adolescents.

BACKGROUND: Substance abuse is one of the nation's primary health concerns. Native American youth experience higher rates of substance abuse than other youth. There is little empirical evidence that exists concerning the use of culturally-based interventions among Native American adolescents. OBJECTIVES: This study used a community-based participatory research approach to develop and evaluate an innovative school-based cultural intervention targeting substance abuse among a Native American adolescent population. METHODS: A two-condition quasi-experimental study design was used to compare the Cherokee Talking Circle (CTC) culturally-based intervention condition (n = 92) with the Be A Winner Standard Education (SE) condition (n = 87). Data were collected at pre-intervention, immediate post-intervention, and 90-day post-intervention using the Cherokee Self-Reliance Questionnaire, Global Assessment of Individual Needs - Quick, and Written Stories of Stress measures. RESULTS: Significant improvements were found among all measurement outcomes for the CTC culturally-based intervention. CONCLUSIONS: The data provide evidence that a Native American adolescent culturally-based intervention was significantly more effective for the reduction of substance abuse and related problems than a noncultural-based intervention. SCIENTIFIC SIGNIFICANCE: This study suggests that cultural considerations may enhance the degree to which specific interventions address substance abuse problems among Native American adolescents.

Cherokee self-reliance and word-use in stories of stress.

This study examined the relationship between Cherokee self-reliance and related values expressed through word-use in stories of stress written by Cherokee adolescents. The overall aim of this pilot study was to test the feasibility of using cultural appropriate measurements for a larger intervention study of substance abuse prevention in Cherokee adolescents. A sample of 50 Cherokee adolescent senior high school students completed the Cherokee Self-Reliance Questionnaire and wrote their story of stress. The Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) program, a word-based computerized text analysis software, was used to report the percentage of words used in the selected word categories in relation to all the words used by a participant. Word-use from the stories of stress were found to correlate with Cherokee self-reliance.