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[Barras bravas membership and its influence on drug use]
Catalina López-Quintero1, Yehuda Neumark
1Braun School of Public Health & Community Medicine, Hebrew University-Hadassah, Jerusalem, Israel. catalina.lopez@mail.huji.ac.il
Objectives:
To identify the factors associated with barras bravas (soccer fans clubs) membership, the incidence in drug use and the association between membership and drug use.
Materials And Methods:
This report analyzed data from 1303 adolescent scholars who participated in two stages (T1 and T2) of a longitudinal study done in 23 schools of Bogota during 2006- 2007, selected through a probabilistic sampling stratified by clusters. Logistic regression models were implemented in order to evaluate the associations of interest.
Results:
In T1, 8,2% of the surveyed students reported barras bravas membership. After one year of follow-up, 14,2% of barras bravas members, and 4,6% of non-members, initiated drug use. The association between barras bravas membership and drug use onset remained significant after adjusting for multiple confounding factors (ARR=2,4; 95%CI=1,2-4,7). Sex-stratified analysis indicated that this association remained statistically significant only for females (ARR=6,1; 95%CI=2,5-15,3).
Conclusions:
Barras bravas membership increases the risk of drug use onset, particularly among females. The findings imply that preventive efforts should be focused on females in these contexts.
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