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IRVING, TX and BOSTON, MA, January 29, 2004 - Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) and Outside The Classroom today introduced AlcoholEdu for High School, the first online prevention program designed to combat underage drinking by giving students the information they need to make safer and healthier decisions about alcohol.
AlcoholEdu for High School is a Web-based prevention program that engages high school students with science-based alcohol education. Developed by leading prevention experts, it provides an interactive experience that changes perceptions, motivates behavior change and helps high school students contend with a culture that too often encourages, rather than discourages, underage drinking.
"Teens have so much to live for. What they don't often realize is that underage drinking can destroy what they've achieved and hope to accomplish," said MADD National President Wendy J. Hamilton. "With AlcoholEdu for High School, youth will know that making smart decisions, like not to drink before the legal age of 21, to never drink and drive, and not to get in a car with someone who has been drinking, can protect their brains, bodies and their lives."
AlcoholEdu for High School will be rolled out nationally starting February 1, 2004, complementing other successful MADD programs such as the multimedia School Assembly program, which reaches nearly two million students in more than 2,000 high schools every year.
AlcoholEdu for High School can be taken on any standard Internet-connected computer and combines streaming audio with interactive exercises, making it easy for teachers to administer and engaging for students to take. It is divided into three 30-minute sections, making it ideal for use either in the classroom or for homework as part of the school's alcohol and other drug prevention curriculum. The interactive exercises bring to life the scientific content, and case-history role-playing helps students understand the social context of alcohol and the decisions they have to make when they find themselves in various situations.
A survey option enables the school to gather pre-, post- and follow-up data on student attitudes and behavior. The surveys provide valuable information about the efficacy of AlcoholEdu and the school's other prevention programs, helping administrators meet federal and state funding requirements for prevention programs.
Alcohol is the number one drug problem among teenagers in America, killing 6.5 times more young people than all other illicit drugs combined. People who start drinking before the age of 15 are four times more likely to develop alcohol dependency problems later in life than people who don't. According to the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, the total societal costs of underage drinking in the U.S. amount to $53 billion per year. There are more than 20,000 high schools and more than 12 million high school students in the country. Successful alcohol prevention programs at the high school level can be proven cost effective by directly influencing lower dropout rates and improved academic performance.
MADD joined forces with Outside The Classroom, a Boston-area company, to develop AlcoholEdu for High School following the success of the three-year-old AlcoholEdu for College program, which this year is being taken by more than 100,000 college students on more than 300 campuses nationwide. On college campuses where all first-year students were required to take AlcoholEdu, the proportion of students abstaining from alcohol increased, average consumption of alcohol per student decreased and the proportion of students engaging in dangerous "binge" drinking decreased.
Five high schools are piloting AlcoholEdu for High School, including Episcopal Academy in Pennsylvania, Gloucester High School in Massachusetts and Suffern High School in New York. In Gloucester last year, senior-year students took AlcoholEdu for College. They reported a deeper understanding of the problems associated with underage drinking and recommended that all freshmen take an online prevention program at a time in their lives when most students are first confronted with the decision whether or not to drink alcohol.
"When a critical mass of students in the school take AlcoholEdu, it starts an ongoing community-wide dialogue that supports all our other prevention efforts," said Joseph Sullivan, Principal of Gloucester High School, who plans to give AlcoholEdu to all students in the school over time. "Young people in high school are making many of the most important decisions of their lives. AlcoholEdu becomes part of the decision-making process for our students and helps them override the peer pressure they may feel if confronted with alcohol. Making the choice not to start drinking before they are of age will help them be far more successful in school and in life."
According to Brandon Busteed, Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Outside The Classroom, when an entire social group takes AlcoholEdu, it creates a 'population-level prevention' affect that begins to resonate throughout the community.
"By improving overall knowledge and changing the group's attitudes about alcohol, AlcoholEdu creates its own 'epidemic' of healthy behavior," Busteed said. "AlcoholEdu for High School and MADD's other prevention programs draw the first line in the battle against underage drinking by helping the young people themselves understand the real story about alcohol."
High schools will purchase AlcoholEdu for High School using their own operating funds or donations from sponsors. Schools pay a site-license fee based on the size of the school.
About MADD
MADD (www.madd.org) is the premiere organization working to stop drunk driving, support the victims of this violent crime and prevent underage drinking. MADD is a 501(c) 3 charity with 600 chapters and 2 million members nationwide. Nearly 270,000 lives have been saved since MADD's founding in 1980.
About Outside The Classroom
Outside The Classroom (www.outsidetheclassroom.com) was founded to address critical behavioral health issues. The AlcoholEdu development team is led by Richard P. Keeling, MD, Vice President for Prevention Programs, and includes prevention professionals, assessment and evaluation experts, and leading scientists, including distinguished neuropsychologists and brain researchers Scott Swartzwelder, Ph.D., and Aaron White, Ph.D., of Duke University Medical Center. In addition to AlcoholEdu, universities nationwide are gaining insight about key campus health trends and environmental policy issues with TheHealthSurvey, a comprehensive, online assessment tool. Outside The Classroom collaborates with many prominent organizations, including MADD and the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA).
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