Contra Costa County Office of Education

Classroom-Based Prevention Programs

CONTACT US for more information or to REQUEST A CURRICULUM TRAINING

CATCH My Breath - Grade 6

CATCH My Breath is an evidence-based youth nicotine vaping prevention program that provides students with the skills to resist peer pressure and media influences to try e-cigarettes. The overall goal of CATCH is to prevent the initiation of e-cigarette use and the program is taught over four, 45- to 50-minute lessons.

The program is designed to help students:

Discover that non-use of e-cigarettes is the norm for adolescents.
Identify reasons why young people might start using e-cigarettes.
Recognize the subtle, and not so subtle, messages in e-cigarette advertising.
Practice skills for resisting peer pressure and advertising pressure to use e-cigarettes.
Decide on their personal reasons not to use e-cigarettes and set goals for future non-use.

The intended outcomes are to ensure that students will:

Resist their own curiosity, peer and advertising pressure to experiment with e-cigarettes.
Understand that e-cigarettes are addictive, unhealthy, and not as popular as they think.
Influence friends and peers not to use e-cigarettes.

CATCH My Breath is aligned with National and State Standards and more information about the program can be accessed at CATCH.org.

Project ALERT - Grades 7 & 8

Project ALERT motivates students against drug use, cultivates new non-use attitudes and beliefs, and equips teens with the skills and strategies they will use to resist drugs. The content and instructional strategies are grounded in research on effective health education.

The Project ALERT Core Curriculum, implemented in grade 7, consists of 11, 45- to 50-minute lessons, organized into four parts. The lessons build on each other and are taught in consecutive order. The concepts stressed in each lesson are:

Motivating nonuse (Lessons 1-3).
Identifying pressures to use drugs, learning to resist those pressures, and practicing resistance skills (Lessons 4-6).
Review of key concepts and resistance skills practice (Lessons 7-9, 11)
Newest content: Prescription Opioids and Heroin (Lesson 8); Smoking and Vaping Cessation (Lesson 10).

The Project ALERT Booster Lessons, implemented in grade 8, are designed to extend the Core Curriculum’s positive effects. Research has shown that Booster Lessons are critical for maintaining early prevention gains. The concepts stressed in the Booster Lessons are:

Motivating resistance to drugs (Booster Lesson 1).
Practicing resisting internal and external pressures to use drugs (Booster Lesson 2).
Benefits of resisting drugs (Booster Lesson 3).

Project ALERT (middle school) is aligned to the California Health Standards. Visit the Project ALERT website for more information about the program.

You & Me, Together Vape Free - Grades 7-12

You & Me, Together Vape-Free, from the Stanford REACH Lab, addresses key factors associated with youth e-cigarette use, including changing adolescents’ attitudes towards and misperceptions about e-cigarettes, increasing refusal skills, reducing stress and improving coping, and decreasing intentions and actual use of all e-cigarette products.

The You and Me, Together Vape-Free curriculum includes five, 45- to 50-minute lessons with activities, online quiz games, and worksheets, in addition to presentations and resources. An optional 6th lesson addresses cannabis/marijuana use.

Goals:

Increase student’s knowledge about e-cigarettes and the harms they can cause.
Gain awareness of strategies manufacturers and sellers of e-cigarettes employ to increase use among adolescents, such as deceptive marketing strategies.
Gain skills to refuse experimentation and use of e-cigarettes.
Ultimately, prevent and reduce e-cigarette use of any type, including nicotine, cannabis/THC, and/or non-nicotine products.

The program can be accessed at You and Me, Together Vape-Free Curriculum.

Cannabis Prevention Curriculum

Smart Talk - Grades 7-12

Smart Talk: Cannabis Prevention & Awareness -Middle School / High School / Non-Traditional

The Smart Talk curriculum is a component of the Stanford Cannabis Awareness & Prevention Toolkit. This five-lesson, theory-based, and evidence-informed curriculum is designed to address key factors contributing to youth cannabis use. Each lesson focuses on enhancing students’ ability to resist marketing and social media influences, while also promoting healthy coping strategies. The curriculum aims to reduce stress and symptoms of depression—both of which are linked to cannabis initiation—and to strengthen refusal skills, ultimately decreasing both the intention to use and actual use of cannabis products.

The program can be accessed at Smart Talk Curriculum.

Opioid/Fentanyl Awareness & Misuse Prevention Curriculum

Safety First - Grades 9-12

We implement the Safety First curriculum, developed by Stanford REACH Lab, with students at Golden Gate Community School sites and Mt. McKinley (Juvenile Hall).

The curriculum, which is made up of lessons on alcohol, opioids/fentanyl, and other drugs, encourages youth to abstain from use, but this curriculum also includes clear harm reduction messages for youth who are experimenting or using, to provide high school students with scientifically accurate information to empower them to quit and/or reduce harm, should they choose to continue to use.

The program is particularly relevant for students already using, for students at-risk for using, and/or for students living in communities in which there is any level of exposure to drugs.

This program can be accessed on the Stanford REACH Lab website.