SCHOOLS RELUCTANT TO PARTICIPATE IN SURVEY ON TEEN BEHAVIORS

The state's efforts to monitor risky teenage behavior, including drug
use, is in jeopardy because too many school districts have refused to
participate in the survey.

So far, seven school districts have declined. Unless some can be
persuaded to change their minds, the Health Department will not be
able to collect meaningful data.

Will the department then scotch the survey? "I don't know what we will
do," said Jana E. Hesser, coordinator of the Rhode Island Youth Risk
Behavior Survey. "I have to tell you I'm quite concerned."

Designed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the survey
asks questions pertaining to drug and alcohol use, sexual behavior,
exercise, diet, violence and suicide. Some 46 states and territories
participate. Rhode Island conducted the survey in 1995 and 1997, and
had hired a private survey company to do it again this year.

Earlier this month, the Scituate School Committee voted unanimously
not to allow the survey, expressing concerns that it might actually
encourage the bad behavior it was inquiring about.

"Isn't that one of the old-time justifications for not telling kids
about sex?" Hesser said. "Which obviously is totally naive because
kids all know about these things anyway."

The Scituate vote was taken at a public meeting, and reported in the
press, but Hesser said she could not reveal the names of the other
five districts that begged off. Not only are the individual surveys
anonymous, but the state does not disclose which districts
participate, nor does it provide results broken down by community.

To get a representative sample, the state goes to 25 randomly selected
schools, and surveys 100 randomly selected students within each.

In past years, only a few school districts declined. But this year,
the schools, which are now required by the Department of Education to
survey and to test their students, are apparently weary of all the
prodding and probing.

Hesser says that the Youth Behavior Risk Survey provides invaluable
information about the major sources of illness and death among
adolescents, as well as behaviors - such as physical inactivity - that
set the stage for illness in adulthood. Public health and school
officials need to know about these behaviors so they can target their
interventions.

"There's no other way to get this information," Hesser said. "A lot of
it doesn't show up in clinical settings or through law enforcement,
and it's important to be able to track it."

For example, Hesser is publishing a report in this month's issue of
Medicine and Health/Rhode Island, a local medical journal, that
provides information from the 1997 survey about teen drug use. It
points to an unusually high use of inhalants - sniffing glue or other
substances to get high - a form of drug abuse that is often
overlooked but can be deadly.

In the survey of students in grades 9 through 12, 21 percent reported
using inhalants; nationwide the figure is only 16 percent. "Inhalant
use has been going up. People don't seem to pay much attention to it,"
Hesser said. "It's probably the most dangerous form of drug abuse. You
can be dead after one use."

Additionally, Hesser's report points out a high correlation between
cigarette smoking and use of alcohol and other drugs. Because it may
be easier to find out that a student smokes, this habit can be a red
flag that other drug use may be going on.

"If a young person smokes cigarettes, the probability of present or
future alcohol, marijuana, or other drug use increases," Hesser
writes. "If a physician knows that an adolescent patient smokes, the
physician should be alert to other possible drug use."

Others findings from the 1997 survey are:

*More than three out of four students have consumed at least one drink
of alcohol.

*About one in three consumed five or more drinks in a row during the
previous month.

*About one in three had his or her first drink before age
13.

*One in three students smoked cigarettes during the previous 30
days.

*One in four smoked his or her first whole cigarette before age
13.

*Almost half (47 percent) have used marijuana once or more in their
life and nearly a third (29 percent) had used marijuana in the month
before the survey.