The “Hopes for Life—Communities” Study is a one-year randomized controlled trial that uses a curriculum that teaches the GROW Free Recovery Program and the GROW Strong Resilience Program back-to-back.

We enrolled 453 Zambian young adults ages 18-24 who reported unhealthy alcohol use (UAU). Half participated in weekly GROW groups led by trained volunteer coaches. The other half, a “waitlist control group” who will receive the full intervention in 2024, received a pamphlet describing the harms of UAU and some suggestions for how to decrease alcohol use. Self-reported alcohol, tobacco and other drug use were measured at baseline and six months later using validated substance use questionnaires.

Figures 1-4 compare reductions in alcohol use between the two groups.

Figure 1: During the past 30 days, alcohol use in the waitlist control group dropped from 95.4% to 76.0%, a reduction of 19.4%. Reductions in the intervention group were significantly higher, dropping from 86.2% to 30.9%, a 55.3% reduction.

Figure 2: We see that past 3-month alcohol use dropped from 99.4% in the waitlist control group to 77.7%, a reduction of 21.7%. Reductions in the intervention group were significantly higher, dropped from 96.3% to 38.8%, a 57.5% reduction.

Figure 3: These graphs show how many participants had used alcohol in their lives (lifetime use) and in the past 6 months. In the waitlist control group, 99.4% of participans had used alcohol at some time in their lives. This dropped to 89.1% in the past 6 months, a reduction of 10.3%. In the intervention group, 97.9% had used alcohol at some point in their lives, however in the past 6 months, this dropped to 56.1%, a reduction of 43.7%. This means that 43.7% of participants in the intervention group stopped drinking completely after joining the program.

Figure 4: The majority of study participants reported using other substances like tobacco, marijuana, inhalants, and heroin at sometime in their life (74.7% of waitlist control participants, 73.5% of intervention participants). In the past 6 months, since the start of the GROW HFL-C study, other substance use dropped to 66.1% in the waitlist control group and to 29.8% in the intervention group. This means that 43.7% of intervention participants and 8.6% of waitlist control participants stopped using all mood-altering drugs.

Substance use reductions reflected in all four figures are highly statistically significant at the p<.001 level.