The goal of the project described in this proposal is to create and test a brief intervention curriculum on cannabis education for Detroit young adults who have disengaged from the educational system with the input of a steering committee of stakeholders and to generate pilot data to allow for the continuation and scaling up of this project. The steering committee will include young adults from SWES’s client base who will be part of the group that reviews available screening tools, brief intervention curricula, and suggests adaptations to the curriculum. The SWES young adults who will serve on the steering committee will be compensated for their time. The steering committee will also include representatives from SWES’s workforce development and counseling group, graduate students, and a faculty member from University of Michigan School of Social Work. Once the steering committee is established (Objective 1), members
will review various existing screening tools and brief interventions available for young adult substance use and suggest adaptations of the content into a new brief intervention curriculum (Objective 2). After an exhaustive and iterative process where all members of the steering committee have determined that the changes made to the screening and intervention tools are adequate, the new brief intervention
curriculum will be implemented with a pilot group of young adults and data will be gathered to assess its acceptability and effectiveness. To test the new brief intervention curriculum (Objective 3) young adults (n=30) from SWES’s client base will be recruited to participate in receiving the intervention. Data will be collected at the beginning and throughout the brief intervention to understand how cannabis knowledge, attitudes and use change over time as a result of the intervention. Once pilot data are available it will be analyzed by the steering committee (Objective 4) and disseminated to the Detroit community through a newsletter, health forum, and podcast, and to the substance use field through conference presentations and manuscripts. The pilot data will also form the basis of a federal grant proposal submitted in 2023 to scale up the project.