Press Release - AAAS to develop science-based teaching tools on underage alcohol useEfforts to halt underage drinking often focus on peer pressure and the prevention of risky behaviors, but the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is undertaking a new federally funded project to give middle-school children a science-based understanding of what can happen to them if they use alcohol.
The three-year project, called The Science Inside Alcohol, will incorporate recent advances in neuroscience that have been shedding new light on how alcohol affects the body. It is funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) with an initial grant of $253,000 and an anticipated total of $831,000.
The project will draw on AAAS's long experience in developing standards and benchmarks for effective science education. It is getting underway as a new study in the September issue of the journal Prevention Science suggests that teachers and parents should pay attention to alcohol prevention as early as the fourth grade. The analysis, by psychiatrist John E. Donovan of the University of Pittsburgh, cited one national survey in which 6.9 percent of fourth graders and 12.9 percent of sixth graders reported alcohol use during the past 12 months.
While prevention messages, including warnings that alcohol can make youngsters do things they ordinarily would not do, are an important part of the effort to stop underage drinking, the new AAAS project will go beyond a purely prevention approach. It will offer students, and their adult teachers, a look at key scientific concepts related to alcohol use and abuse in simple, direct language.
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