The quality of mental health care delivered by the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is generally as good or better than care delivered by private health plans, although it falls short of the high standards set in VA guidelines.
This study of middle school students in Southern California found that racial and ethnic variations in substance use among young adolescents are influenced by individual, family and school factors.
Summarizes results of RAND's evaluation of the progress and impact of Arkansas' antismoking and health programs established with its share of tobacco settlement funds.
California parolees' health care, mental health care, and drug- and alcohol-treatment needs, as well as where parolees go when they return to counties, place significant demands on counties' safety-net resources and on their ability meet those needs.
The economic cost of methamphetamine use reached more than an estimated $23 billion in 2005, mostly from the intangible burden that addiction places on dependent users and their premature mortality and from crime and criminal justice costs.
This research brief describes a study that found that working for pay in and around the 10th grade is associated with increased smoking among teens.
This research brief describes evidence RAND researchers use to challenge findings from 1990 report on marijuana use and emotional and social adjustment in teens.
This study explored using outcome data to assess adolescent substance abuse treatment program performance. However, this approach may be problematic. A more promising approach may be to identify quality-of-care indicators for assessing performance.
This research brief summarizes research to create Getting To Outcomes (GTO), a science-based model and support tools to help local groups develop or improve substance-use-prevention programs.
This research brief shows that alcohol advertising appears to promote adolescent drinking and suggests that school drug prevention programs can blunt the impact of alcohol ads on youth.
This fact sheet reports lowered use of marijuana among ninth graders exposed to anti-drug messages from the National Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign along with Project ALERT Plus, a drug prevention curriculum for middle school students.
This research brief describes work documented in “Early Predictors of Adolescent Violence,” American Journal of Public Health.
Alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs are in the nation's schools, sidetracking kids from getting a good education and from building a solid foundation for a productive, healthy life.
In this study, RAND researchers found that one substance abuse treatment program helped young probationers reduce substance abuse and improve their psychological functioning.
Whereas earlier studies focused on older adolescents, we have examined the trajectory of smoking from the middle school years to the end of high school and have assessed the association between early smoking and other concurrent high-risk behaviors as well as later behaviors.
This research brief describes work documented in School-Based Drug Prevention: What Kind of Drug Use Does It Prevent? (MR-1459-RWJ).
A recent analysis by RAND's Drug Policy Research Center (DPRC) suggests that data typically used to support a marijuana gateway effect can be explained as well by a different theory.
Project ALERT is based on the theory that adolescents turn to drugs because of perceived social norms, because media images and the influence of peers make drug use appear attractive, and because, being kids, they want to appear mature and independent.
The United States has for some time now been spending tens of billions of dollars a year in an attempt to control the trafficking and use of illicit drugs; most of those dollars have been used to support stricter enforcement.
Research confirms the pervasive nature of teenage drinking and indicates that alcohol misuse may be more of a problem than previously imagined. A second study shows teen drinking is more strongly associated with sociability than with antisocial behavior.
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