Schools and school-based health centers present tremendous opportunities to identify adolescents who are at risk because of substance use and provide services to help them make good choices concerning substance use, their health, and their well-being. Rates of substance use in schools are high, as over 35% of 12^th graders report past-month alcohol use, and over 23% report past-month drug use.[1] Yet schools are also places where adolescents are likely to seek help and feel comfortable discussing sensitive issues such as substance use; in fact, adolescents are 21 times more likely to visit a school-based health center for behavioral health issues than community-based primary care providers.[2] The combination of high rates of substance use among high school students and high levels of student willingness to seek out school-based behavioral health services makes school-based health settings prime spaces to implement SBIRT. However, there are significant logistical and administrative challenges to implementing SBIRT in school settings, and knowledge of how to optimally structure and deliver SBIRT in schools is still developing.

The resources on this page are school-specific guides and tools that can be used in tandem with the other resources elsewhere on this website in school settings. These tools can help facilitate SBIRT implementation in schools, provide an overview of the current state of the art in school-based SBIRT, and provide examples of notable school-based SBIRT and prevention and early intervention initiatives from across the nation.

[1] National Institute on Drug Abuse. Monitoring the Future 2015 Survey Results. https://www.drugabuse.gov/related-topics/trends-statistics/infographics/monitoring-future-2015-survey-results.  Accessed June 22, 2016.

[2] Weinstein, J. (2006). School-based health centers and the primary care physician: an opportunity for collaborative care. Primary Care: Clinics in Office Practice, 33(2), 305-315.