Project Amp
Youth-driven substance use prevention & early intervention
Project Amp is an extended brief mentorship intervention that utilizes the power of young adult peer mentors to implement a youth-focused, strengths-based, and non-punitive prevention and early intervention resource. This multi-session intervention originated within a Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) framework, and pairs youth with young adults with lived experience of recovery and resiliency specific to substance use, mental health, trauma or related challenges.
Mentors meet with youth over four to six sessions. They work toward exploring youth participants’ strengths and interests, navigating pressures and well-being, understanding alcohol and drug risks, developing self-efficacy, clarifying values, achieving goals, and finding positive social connections in the school and community.
Project Amp mentors follow a structured but flexible curriculum that offers guidance, tips, activities, facts, resources, and conversation starters. This curriculum equips mentors with evidence-based tools to use during the youth-guided mentorship intervention. Mentors are trained in Motivational Interviewing, trauma-informed care, person-centered care, and strategies for sharing their own experiences of resiliency and recovery.
Because of its flexible nature, Project Amp can support youth at varying stages of substance use risk and related mental health challenges. Typically, mentors are embedded within behavioral health agencies, settings, or teams that allow for seamless access to clinical supports and supervision as needed. Through established relationships in the community, mentors then work across schools, primary and behavioral healthcare agencies, and other youth-serving settings.
We Can Help You
- Determine how Project Amp can best fit in your school, agency, or community through a free consultation call
- Conduct training for Project Amp mentors and supervisors in-person, virtually, or through a hybrid learning approach
- Provide implementation planning, coaching, and technical assistance for Project Amp mentors and/or supervisors. This might include:
- Readiness assessments
- Racial equity consultation and assessments
- Cultural and setting-specific adaptation strategies
- Support with stakeholder engagement
- Funding and sustainability planning
- Learning communities to provide ongoing learning, professional development, technical assistance, and peer-to-peer sharing among mentors and/or supervisor groups
- Evaluate Project Amp and/or related youth substance use prevention, early intervention, treatment, and recovery support programming and initiatives
Project Amp: Youth-Centered, Evidence-Informed Prevention & Early Intervention
Project Amp utilizes near-age peer mentors to implement a strength based, trauma-informed, and recovery-focused substance use prevention and early intervention model with youth.
Core elements of Project Amp include motivational interviewing, person-centeredness, building trusting relationships based on shared lived experience, connecting with social supports, and navigating conversations on strengths, goals, coping, alcohol and drug use, and well-being. Project Amp is an innovative model with emerging evidence for effectiveness and successful implementation in schools and communities. Learn more and find resources on Project Amp's website.
Learn more about partnering with us.
Learn More
- Visit projectampforyouth.com for more resources
- Watch more videos about Project Amp
- Brief Intervention for Adolescents At Risk of Substance Use: Outcomes from a Pilot Study (PDF)
- Project Amp: A Resource to Improve Academic Outcomes (PDF)
- Integrating Project Amp into States’ Adolescent Prevention and Early Intervention Initiatives (PDF)
- Responding to COVID-19: Project Amp Can Help Students (PDF)
- Financing Project Amp Implementation in Schools and School-Based Health Centers (PDF)
- Project Amp Implementation Guide (PDF)
- Enhancing adolescent SBIRT with a peer-delivered intervention: An implementation study (Journal of Substance Abuse Treatment, August 2019)
- A framework for integrating young peers in recovery into adolescent substance use prevention and early intervention (Addictive Behaviors, December 2019)
- Brief Mentorship Intervention to Prevent Alcohol & Other Drug Use by Adolescents (podcast episode)
- Substance Use Prevention and Early Intervention
- Opioid Overdose Prevention and Support