The Canadian Underage Substance Use Prevention Trial

Despite having made some strides with respect to reducing adolescent drinking rates, illicit substance use and substance use disorders (SUDs) remain significantly above national targets for health promotion and disease prevention in Canada and the United States. Now, more than ever, there is a pressing need for effective substance abuse prevention in Canada, particularly for those most at risk of developing substance use problems including prescription drug misuse. Clearly, new approaches to prevention (with lower numbers needed to treat) are needed and which translate new research on addiction vulnerability to personalised prevention and early intervention. The PreVenture Program involves brief cognitive-behavioural interventions targeting personality traits from a neurocognitive perspective. While the personality-targeted approach has been shown to be effective in reducing most substance use behaviors, it has yet to be evaluated for its impact on uptake of prescription drug misuse in adolescents. The Canadian Underage Substance use Prevention (CUSP) Trial aims to evaluate the long-term effects of a personality-targeted school-based prevention program on delaying the onset of drug and alcohol use in adolescence over three years across Canada. This is a hybrid effectiveness \[E\] and implementation-facilitation \[IF\] trial on delaying the onset of drug and alcohol use in adolescence. In the \[E\] part, the effects of a personalized prevention program will be tested against usual school-based prevention curricula. PreVenture is delivered through a TtT implementation model with or without \[IF\], e.g. with ongoing supervision and web-based support. The \[IF\] package is designed to support long-term sustainability of PreVenture after a community accesses PreVenture training.