Our Story

The Flint Adolescent Study (FAS) is a longitudinal interview study of youth growing up in Flint, Michigan. The study began in 1994 with a cohort of 850 ninth graders. The goal of the study is to explore adolescent resilience. It began with a focus on school dropout and substance use across their four high school years. We continued to follow the participants into their 20's as they transitioned into adulthood.

Now in their 30's, many of the original FAS participants have children of their own, and are participating in the follow up FAS Generation 2 study.

Find out more about FAS

Flint Adolescent Study

Guided by a resiliency framework, this longitudinal study demonstrated that assets and resources in youth lives help protect against risk factors for alcohol and substance use and other problems during adolescence.

FAS Generation 2

The specific aims of this study are to understand the intergenerational transmission of risk for alcohol, tobacco, and other drug (ATOD) use in an urban, predominantly African-American sample.

What have we learned?

A photo of one of the Youth Empowerment Solutions (YES) cohorts in front of a mural titled For Peaceful Communities that they painted. The YES Curriculum was informed by data from FAS.

Translating our Findings

Data from FAS has been used to inform health promotion and violence prevention programs that empower youth and promote safe and healthy futures in Flint and around the nation. More

Methods & Data

The first eight waves of FAS data (1994-2002) are available online from the ICPSR data archive. Questionnaires, scales and data for other years are available upon request.