The ATHENA Curriculum

Initiative Description: School-based, sport team-centered program to prevent young female high school athletes’ disordered eating and body-shaping drug use. The ATHENA (Athletes Targeting Healthy Exercise and Nutrition Alternative) curriculum’s 8 weekly 45-minute sessions were incorporated into a team’s usual practice activities. The content was gender-specific, peer-led, and explicitly scripted. Topics included healthy sports nutrition, effective exercise training, drug use and other unhealthy behaviors’ effects on sports performance, media images of females, and depression prevention.

Study Results: Experimental athletes reported significantly less ongoing and new use of diet pills and less new use of athletic-enhancing substances.

Level of Evidence: Very Good