Implementing evidence-based substance use prevention curricula in North Carolina public school districts

Abstract

The Safe and Drug-Free Schools and Communities Act (SDFSCA) provides funding for prevention education to nearly every school district in the nation. Recent federal policy requires SDFSCA recipients to implement evidence-based prevention programs. This paper reports the extent to which North Carolina public school districts implement evidence-based substance use prevention curricula. Results showed that while the majority of school districts use evidence-based prevention curricula, they are rarely the most commonly used curricula. Evidence-based curricula are much more likely to be used at the middle school level than at the elementary or high school levels. Urbanicity, coordinator time, and coordinator experience correlated with extensive use of evidence-based curricula in the bivariate analysis, but only time spent on prevention by the Safe and Drug-Free Schools (SDFS) coordinator significantly predicted extensive use in the multivariate analysis. Increasing district SDFSCA coordinator time is a necessary step for diffusing evidence-based curricula.