Dwelling upon the study design for our community-intervention trial, it should be stated that the research should be conducted in a specific community and among a particular age group. Therefore, attention should be paid to Miami Dade, Florida, and to Chlamydia infected adolescents aged 14 -18. Using the information from the famous community intervention trials, we can create a personal study design that may be used as a role model. Using the research design of the community intervention trial devoted to the reduction of alcohol consumption among adolescence conducted by Perry et. al. (2001), we should implement our intervention in two stages. The first stage should presuppose the observation of an ethnic group in Miami Dade, Florida of people aged from 10 up to 14. When these people will reach the age of 14, we are going to shift to the second stage with active intervention aimed at propaganda of Chlamydia screening starting with 14 years old. The intrusion into the school curriculum and placing a specific subject aimed at teaching students the danger of Chlamydia and the ways for protection from this infection may be a good method used by Carleton et al (1987). Having considered a number of intervention trials, the conclusion is drawn that many community interventions are based on two groups, the intervention group and the control one. Thus study design may be perfectly used in our research at the second stage of intervention (Shafer et al, 2002; COMMIT Research Group, 1991). Carleton et al (1995) used cross-sectional surveys which may be used at the final, third stage of our community intervention trial. Using the experience of Perry et al. (1997), we may also pay more attention to nationality of the subjects and implement intervention from several directions, teachers, parental control, and senior students’ positive example.
Reference List
Carleton, R. A., Lasater, T. M., Assaf, A., Lefebvre, R. C., & McKinlay, S. M. (1987). The Pawtucket Heart Health Program: I. An experiment in population-based disease prevention. Rhode Island Medical Journal, 70, 533-538.
Carleton, R., Lasater, T., Assaf, A., Feldman, H., & McKinlay, S. (1995). The Pawtucket Heart Health Program: community changes in cardiovascular risk factors and projected disease risk. American Journal of Public Health, 85(6), 777-785.
COMMIT Research Group. (1991). Community Intervention Trial for Smoking Cessation (COMMIT): Summary of design and intervention. Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 83, 1620-1628.
Perry, C. L., Sellers, D. E., Johnson, C., Pedersen, S., Bachman, K. J., Parcel, G. S., Stone, E. J., Luepker, R. V., Wu, M., Nader, P. R., Cook, K. (1997). The Child and Adolescent Trial for Cardiovascular Health (CATCH): Intervention, implementation, and feasibility for elementary schools in the United States. Health Education and Behavior, 24, 716-735.
Perry, C. L., Williams, C. L., Komro, K. A., Veblen-Mortenson, S., Forster, J. L., Bernstein-Lachter, R., Pratt, L. K., Dudovitz, B., Munson, K. A., Farbaksh, K., Finnegan, J., McGovern, P. (2000). Project Northland high school interventions: Community action to reduce adolescent alcohol use. Health Education and Behavior, 27, 29-49.
Shafer, M. B., Tebb, K. P., Pantell, R. H., Wibbelsman, C. J., Neuhaus, J. M., Tipton, A. C. Kunin, S. B. Ko, T. H., Schweppe, D. M., & Bergman, D. A. (2002). Effect of a clinical practice improvement intervention on Chlamydial screening among adolescent girls. JAMA, 288(22):2846-2852.