Intervention to Motivate Teens to be a Designated Organ Donor on Driver's License
Condition: Tissue and Organ Procurement; Alcohol Abstinence
MeSH terms: Alcohol Abstinence
Study type: Interventional

Summary: 
      This study will test the effectiveness of a multimedia campaign to educate ethnic minority
      teens about the choice to become a designated organ donor on their first driver's license.
    

Detailed description: 
      Less than a fourth of ethnic minority teens in the U.S. are a designated donor (DD) on their
      state-issued driver's license. Asian-American/Pacific Islander (AA/PI) adolescents in Hawaii
      are even less likely to be a DD or to have talked to their family about becoming an organ
      donor. Health education interventions for adolescents have demonstrated improvements in
      knowledge and intentions to be an organ donor; but, AA/PI teens are underrepresented in such
      studies. Nevertheless, whether changes in knowledge or intentions result in more organ donors
      is unclear, since previous studies have not included a concrete behavioral outcome such as
      the teen becoming a donor on their driver's license. This application will test, via a
      randomized clinical trial, the efficacy of an Interactive Multimedia Intervention (IMI) to
      increase the number of AA/PI adolescents who are a DD on their state issued driver's license,
      identification card, or organ donor card/donor registry. Teen groups will be recruited from
      the community (churches and high schools, n = 40 groups, 530 teens) and randomly assigned to
      either the intervention or a comparison condition on prevention of underage drinking of
      alcohol. The theoretically-derived intervention will include culturally sensitive messages
      and information about being a designated donor that will be delivered via a DVD, Email,
      text/instant messaging, and websites. The comparison condition includes materials (DVD)
      previously shown to increase awareness about laws restricting access to alcohol by teens. The
      primary outcome is objectively validated donor status on a teens' driver's license/state
      identification card (ID) or donor card after 12 months of intervention. A secondary outcome
      is the reported rate of family discussions about organ donation and knowledge/intentions
      about donation. We hypothesize the youth groups assigned to the intervention will have higher
      rates for family discussions and DD status, compared to groups in the comparison condition.
      We will also test whether psychosocial and cultural factors act as mediators of any change in
      teens' knowledge, attitudes & stages of change to become a DD. After the randomized trial we
      will disseminate the intervention to Organ Procurement Organizations in Hawaii and other
      states, and track diffusion outcomes over a year. If IMI methods can increase the number of
      minority teens who become a DD on their driver's license by 10% this would translate to
      500,000 more teenage designated donors in the U.S.
    

Intervention name(s): Organ Donor; Alcohol Prevention
Intervention type(s): Behavioral; Behavioral
Intervention description(s): Subjects receive information about becoming a designated organ donor -via DVD, email, text messaging, website, and US mail.; Use DVD, website, text messaging, email and US mail to educate teenagers about the consequences associated with purchasing and using alcohol.
Other intervention name(s): Idecide Project; Roll of the Dice
Allocation: Randomized
Intervention model: Parallel Assignment
Masking: Single (Investigator)
Primary purpose: Prevention
Keywords: ethnic minority adolescents; designated organ donor