Outcome evaluation of ‘Cool and Clean’, a sports-based substance use prevention programme for young people in Switzerland

Abstract

Aims: The aim of this study was to evaluate the outcomes of Cool and Clean, Switzerland’s largest substance use prevention programme, targeted specifically at 10- to 20-year-olds who belong to a sports club and train as part of a team. Method: Based on a representative sample of young people who belong to a sports club and train as part of a team (both participants and non-participants in ‘cool and clean’), a post-test–only static group comparison was used to analyse data on 1,887 individuals from 179 teams (mean age: 13.8; 33.5% girls). Outcome variables included sports-related aspects (achievement motivation, fair play); attitudes towards tobacco, cannabis and alcohol use, and doping; and substance use (tobacco, cannabis and alcohol use). Results: Cool and Clean participants self-reported beneficial effects of the programme in all outcome areas. They also had a more critical attitude towards doping and substance use in general and had a lower reported frequency of cannabis use than non-participants. We found no significant group differences in terms of sports-related variables, tobacco and alcohol use. However, in each of these areas, better outcomes were found among Cool and Clean participants who trained with teams that implemented the programme more comprehensively. Conclusions: There is cross-sectional evidence for the effectiveness of the Cool and Clean programme. Moreover, the level of impact of the programme depends not only on participation per se but also, and more decisively, on how comprehensively the programme is implemented.

High school sport participation and substance use: A cross-sectional analysis of students from the COMPASS study

“…Programs are often targeted for elite athletes and focus on performance enhancing substances ( Canadian Centre on Substance Use and Addiction, 2017 , Hurst et al, 2020 ). However, the ‘Cool and Clean’ program has been implemented in Switzerland since 2003 and has seen some success in reducing cannabis use frequency, although no significant results for alcohol and tobacco have been found ( Balthasar, 2017 , Wicki and Kuntsche, 2018 ). This program targets youth participating in sports organizations and focuses on teaching life skills such as dealing with success and failure and committing to saying no to substances (ages 10–15) or using substances safely (ages 16–20) ( Balthasar, 2017 , Wicki and Kuntsche, 2018 ).…”

“…However, the ‘Cool and Clean’ program has been implemented in Switzerland since 2003 and has seen some success in reducing cannabis use frequency, although no significant results for alcohol and tobacco have been found ( Balthasar, 2017 , Wicki and Kuntsche, 2018 ). This program targets youth participating in sports organizations and focuses on teaching life skills such as dealing with success and failure and committing to saying no to substances (ages 10–15) or using substances safely (ages 16–20) ( Balthasar, 2017 , Wicki and Kuntsche, 2018 ). Coaches and team personnel receive training to deliver messaging which has been shown to be critical to delivering effective health education to sports participants otherwise their efforts may have the opposite intended effect ( Ng, Mäkelä, Parkkari, Kannas, Vasankari, Heinonen, & Selänne, 2017 ).…”

Efficient Ways to Combat Doping in a Sports Education Context!? A Systematic Review on Doping Prevention Measures Focusing on Young Age Groups

“…All of the articles demonstrated a consideration of the state of research. The presentation of the respective study background was evidence-based, albeit sometimes superficially and with global reference to other prevention measures (e.g., Wippert and Fließer, 2016 ; Wicki et al, 2018 ). In half of the prevention measures described, no theory is apparent that was used to derive the procedure.…”

“…Most prevention programs do not fall into a single category. Three exceptions can be identified, leaving aside the outdated purely knowledge-based information sessions on side effects (Goldberg et al, 1990 ) and fear-based intervention (Goldberg et al, 1991 ): (1) the ethical decision-making training (Elbe and Brand, 2016 ), which has a clear assignment to the affective domain and can be classified as ethics and value-based, (2) the CoachMADE program (Ntoumanis et al, 2020 ), which can be assigned to the social skills training category by promoting the communicative skills of coaches and aims to improve interaction with their athletes; and (3) the Cool and Clean program (Wicki et al, 2018 ), which–like the category–is designated as life skills training. Therefore, the last-mentioned program can be assigned to a constructivist understanding of learning, and it represented the only program that focused primarily on this approach.…”