The STARS for Families program is a health promotion program designed to prevent alcohol use among middle and junior high school youth. It has undergone more than 8 years of research supported by grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) of the National Institutes of Health. STARS for Families includes media-related, interpersonal, and environmental prevention strategies matched to the specific initiation, change stages, and risk and/or protective factors of individual children. All prevention strategies are based on the Multicomponent Motivational Stages (McMOS) theoretical model (Werch and DiClemente, 1994). This innovative program has been shown to result in avoidance of, or reductions in, alcohol use among youth, which has been linked to the ocurrance of social problems, injury, illness, death, and rising health care costs.

Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, Model Program, (PDF), 2001