DESCRIPTION (provided by applicant): Despite huge investments in health care, barriers to the delivery and utilization of effective services often lead to limited access to preventive behavioral health programs, especially for minorities and the poor living in rural areas, resulting in health disparities for these groups, an issue relevant to NIDA's mission. The purpose of the proposed pilot study is to test the feasibility of an innovative implementation model that utilizes technology to deliver live, on-line training and TA in the dissemination of the Strong African American Families Program (SAAF), a universal preventive intervention shown to be effective in reducing rural AA youths' alcohol, tobacco and marijuana use, and addressing other challenges. Thus SAAF has the potential of making a significant public health impact on the lives of millions of AA youth and their families living in the rural south. If effective, the proposed web-based approach will facilitate dissemination and implementation of SAAF, and potentially other empirically-based preventive interventions, to rural areas where it is difficult to provide the on-site support that a web approach can deliver. The efficacy of SAAF is tied to the effectiveness of its community-based implementation system, which has hinged on the training of lay AA community members as facilitators that to date has been conducted face-to-face, which significantly limits more widespread dissemination. Therefore, the next step in developing SAAF's public health impact is to examine the feasibility of an innovative internet-based implementation model in disseminating live, on-line SAAF training and TA in a rural southern county using a two-wave pre-post design. Contingent on the findings, a randomized comparative effectiveness trial of two delivery models (internet-based; standard face-to-face) in the implementation of SAAF with families will be conducted in an RO1 application. Our specific aims are to: 1) test the feasibility of training facilitators with fidelity in the implementation o the SAAF intervention model using an internet-based approach; 2) test the feasibility that internet-based SAAF training and TA will contribute to fidelity-promoting implementer processes in the facilitators; 3) explore the extent to which facilitator characteristics impact the relationship between the team implementation climate and fidelity-promoting implementer processes; and 4) pilot methods for the collection of cost and resource information needed for implementation of SAAF-TDM to be used in future applications for the development of cost effectiveness studies. PUBLIC HEALTH RELEVANCE: Barriers to the delivery of preventive behavioral health programs often lead to disparities for minorities and the poor living in rural areas. This pilot study tests the feasibility of an innovative model that utilizes technology for the delivery of Strong African American Families (SAAF), a universal preventive intervention shown to be effective in reducing rural AA youths' alcohol, tobacco and marijuana use, and addressing other challenges. If effective, SAAF has the potential of making a significant public health impact on the lives of millions of African American youth and their families living in the rural south.

Barriers to the delivery of preventive behavioral health programs often lead to disparities for minorities and the poor living in rural areas. This pilot study tests the feasibility of an innovative model that utilizes technology for the delivery of Strong African American Families (SAAF), a universal preventive intervention shown to be effective in reducing rural AA youths' alcohol, tobacco and marijuana use, and addressing other challenges. If effective, SAAF has the potential of making a significant public health impact on the lives of millions of African American youth and their families living in the rural south.