School based preventive intervention - an interactive approach – outcome evaluation of an informative component

Background: The Prevention Team of the Península de Setúbal guides its intervention based on the principles of effective prevention, ensuring the integration of its intervention in the School Health Education Programs, as well as safeguarding multi-component, continued, interactive interventions. This informative component project, universal level, fits in a methodology of continued intervention, the majority of the involved groups were intervened in the previous years to 2017/2018. The objectives are:

• Increase knowledge, especially related to tobacco, alcohol, and cannabis;

• Clarification of myths and beliefs associated with the use of tobacco, alcohol and cannabis;

• Increase the risk perception in relation to psychoactive substance, emphasizing the immediate consequences;

• Increase negative expectations about usage and lower positive expectations.

• Strengthen the partnership of health structures that have responsibility for preventive intervention in school settings (ACES School Health Team and CRI Prevention Team)

Methodology: The strategy involved two training sessions per target group, interactive and dynamic, in each academic year, with a total of 6 hours duration per group. These sessions were monitored and /or co-applied with the teacher responsible and a staff member from the ACES School Health Team. The intervention involved 4 schools, covering in 2017/2018 school year 24 school classes, 525 students (experimental group: 17 classes, 357 students, control group: 7 classes, 168 students). In this poster, we will present the results of the outcome evaluation collected from 329 students, of which 238 are from experimental group (retention rate 67%) and 91 students from the control group (retention rate 54%). The outcome evaluation protocol involved the application of a questionnaire to the experimental group and the control group, pre and post intervention, paired, knowledge and perception dimensions in relation to the risk of addictive behaviours were collected.

Results: The target group comes from schools of Setubal District. In terms of gender, the % coverage is fairly balanced, 51% male. Ages ranged from 12 to 16 years in the experimental and control group (mean age was 13.5 years -control group; 13.0 years - experimental group). The analysis allowed to evaluate the evolution of the students in relation to knowledge of the addictive behaviours, myths and beliefs related to alcohol and cannabis; allowed to perceive the evolution of risk perception and negative and positive expectations of the use of psychoactive substances, as well as the students' perception of the role of the school in this area.

Conclusions: The outcome evaluation of informative component projects, in the scope of prevention at a universal level, makes this component credible as an essential area of prevention projects, as well as identifying the specific needs of the informative component, integrated or not in personal and social competence component, and adapting new methodologies according to the target groups in the school environment. The project also allowed to strengthen the partnership of health structures that have a responsibility in preventive intervention in schools, in particular in the alignment of methodologies, as well as in the increase of the number of integrated intervention projects.