Program Profile: Athletes Training and Learning to Avoid Steroids (ATLAS)

This is a multicomponent school-based drug and alcohol prevention program for male high school athletes. The program is rated Promising. The intervention was associated with statistically significant reductions in participants’ intent to use steroids, and statistically significant increases in their knowledge of the negative side effects of steroids and in their ability to refuse steroids and other drugs.

A Promising rating implies that implementing the program may result in the intended outcome(s).

This program's rating is based on evidence that includes at least one high-quality randomized controlled trial.

Program Goals

Athletes Training and Learning to Avoid Steroids (ATLAS) is designed to reduce or stop adolescent male athletes’ use of anabolic steroids, sport supplements, alcohol, and illegal drugs, while improving healthy nutrition and exercise practices. ATLAS promotes healthy nutrition and exercise behaviors as alternatives to substance use (alcohol, illegal drugs, anabolic steroids, and unhealthy sport supplements).

Target Population

ATLAS is a multicomponent school-based drug and alcohol prevention program for male high school athletes. It is delivered in a classroom to an entire school sports team at once.

Program Components

Students are divided into small social learning groups of 5-6 students, with a peer (squad) leader for each group. ATLAS’s team-centered approach works to exert positive peer pressure and promote positive role modeling. It is highly scripted with explicit instructions and brief 12-15 minute instructional videos for squad leaders and coaches. Each of the program’s ten 45-minute sessions consists of the following interactive activities:

• Educational games
• Building skills (resistance, goal setting, nutrition, strength training)
• Role-playing exercises
• The creation of mock public service campaigns
• Friendly competition between squads

Athletes learn how to achieve their athletic goals by using state-of-the-art sports nutrition and strength training and how to avoid using harmful substances that will impair their physical and athletic abilities. Team workbooks, sports menus, and training guides complement the instructional materials.

Key Personnel

Instruction is led by student–athlete peers and facilitated by coaches. Successful replication of ATLAS requires a highly committed coach–facilitator.

Program Theory

The program concentrates on potential immediate consequences, because of their significance for adolescents, rather than on the future adverse effects of substance use.

Program Note

During 2006–07, Athletes Training and Learning to Avoid Steroids (ATLAS) and its sister program Athletes Targeting Healthy Exercise and Nutrition Alternatives (ATHENA) were sponsored by Sports Illustrated. Since 2007, 14 National Football League teams have sponsored 30,000 student–athletes (males and females) in all sports under a program funded by the National Football League Youth Football Fund.

Study 1

Goldberg and colleagues (1996), in a randomized prospective trial, compared a comprehensive school-based anabolic–androgenic steroid (AAS) intervention (Athletes Training and Learning to Avoid Steroids, or ATLAS) with a control condition that provided only a commercially produced antisteroid informational pamphlet. Thirty-four schools in the Portland, Ore., area were matched in pairs on the basis of demographic characteristics such as school size, family socioeconomic status, school attendance, student participation in a free-lunch program, number of students attending college, and the football team’s win–loss record for the season before participation. Seventeen schools were then randomized to the experimental condition and 17 to the control condition. Three experimental schools ultimately withdrew from the study owing to lack of time and local control over curricular components. Thus, two of the unpaired control schools were matched on demographics, and one of these was randomized to the experimental condition.

The final sample consisted of students at 15 experimental schools (n=702) and 16 control schools (n=804). All participants were male high school football players. The majority of students (81 percent of the control group and 77 percent of the experimental group) were white, with the remaining students from other racial/ethnic groups (including Asian, Native American, Hispanic, African American, and mixed heritage). Control subjects were slightly younger (a mean difference of roughly 7 weeks), had a somewhat higher mean grade point average (3.12 versus 3.02), had fathers who were slightly more educated, and had higher family incomes.

The main outcome measures consisted of self-report questionnaires administered before and after the intervention and at 9- or 12-month follow-up. The questionnaires assessed AAS and other drug use, knowledge of drug effects, attitudes toward and behavioral intent to use AAS, nutrition, exercise knowledge, perceived normative drug use behaviors, belief in media messages, impulsivity, drug refusal skills, body image, feelings of athletic competence, and beliefs about parents’ and coaches’ AAS attitudes. Regression analyses were used for both school- and individual-level data.

Required materials: Athletes Training and Learning to Avoid Steroids (ATLAS) has the following required materials:

• A coach “instructor package,” which includes: program background information, the Squad Leader Training Guide (which explains how to train effective squad leaders), the Ten-Session Curriculum Guide, Coach training DVD, Squad Leader training DVD, overheads, and a CD with templates for student-athlete achievement documents and slide show.
• Use of student materials (Squad Leader Guide, Athlete Workbook, Athlete Guide)
• Distribution of the Ten-Session Squad Leader Manual for each peer leader

Training requirements/provider certification: Training is likely to enhance the fidelity of the curriculum delivery. A 1-day training program, offered by the program developer, is not required but is recommended for school districts with multiple teams and coaches.

These sources were used in the development of the program profile:

These sources were used in the development of the program profile: