Family-based Interventions Prevent Substance Use Among Youth

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A mother and daughter sitting a a table in the kitchen. They are looking at a tablet computer.

The Community Preventive Services Task Force (CPSTF) recommends family-based interventions to prevent substance use among youth. Evidence from a systematic review of 60 studies shows interventions reduce initiation and use of cannabis, alcohol, tobacco, illicit substances, and misuse of prescription drugs among youth. Studies also report reductions in sexual risk behaviors and improvements in mental health symptoms and school-related outcomes.

What are Family-based Interventions to Prevent Substance Use?

These interventions teach parents and caregivers to enhance their children’s substance use preventive skills and practices. Content may address parent-child communication, rule setting, and monitoring, and interventions may include additional substance use prevention activities for youth. Interventions include individual or small group sessions, web-based modules, printed instruction manuals and workbooks, or a combination of these. They may be delivered by health professionals or trained providers in home, school, or community-based settings.

Why is this important?

Youth substance use is associated with increased risk for delinquency, academic underachievement, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted infections, perpetration of, or experience with, violence, injuries, and mental health problems.1 Preventing or delaying substance use initiation reduces later risk for substance use, substance use disorders, and overdose.1

For More Information

References

1 U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), Office of the Surgeon General. Facing Addiction in America: The Surgeon General’s Report on Alcohol, Drugs, and Health. Washington (DC): HHS, 2016. Available from URL: https://addiction.surgeongeneral.gov/sites/default/files/surgeon-generals-report.pdf. Accessed 7/31/23.