Abstract
A central challenge facing twenty-first century community-based researchers and prevention scientists is curriculum adaptation processes. While early prevention efforts sought to develop effective programs, taking programs to scale implies that they will be adapted, especially as programs are implemented with populations other than those with whom they were developed or tested. The principle of cultural grounding, which argues that health message adaptation should be informed by knowledge of the target population and by cultural insiders, provides a theoretical rational for cultural regrounding and presents an illustrative case of methods used to reground the keepin’ it REAL substance use prevention curriculum for a rural adolescent population. We argue that adaptation processes like those presented should be incorporated into the design and dissemination of prevention interventions.
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The authors would like to thank the students and schools who participated in this study. We are also grateful to the graduate students T. Deas, A. Dossett, T. Hipper, J. Moreland, J. Pettigrew, and A. Pezalla that made this project possible. This publication was supported by grant number R01DA021670 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse to The Pennsylvania State University (Michael Hecht, Principal Investigator).Its contents are solely the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the National Institutes of Health.
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This paper is submitted posthumously by Margaret Colby.
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Colby, M., Hecht, M.L., Miller-Day, M. et al. Adapting School-Based Substance Use Prevention Curriculum Through Cultural Grounding: A Review and Exemplar of Adaptation Processes for Rural Schools. Am J Community Psychol 51, 190–205 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-012-9524-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10464-012-9524-8