Prevention - Alcohol, Tobacco, and other drugs

Substance abuse takes an immense financial, physical, and emotional toll on families, individuals, and society. EDC takes a "public health" approach to substance abuse, focusing on solutions that: encourage policymakers to establish laws and regulations; counteract social norms that encourage substance abuse; encourage the enforcement of laws and rules regarding substance abuse; aim to change individual behavior through education.

A Story of Success

A “campus mystery,” an interactive Web site, and interesting “factoids” were the ingredients of one campus’s innovative and successful social norms campaign to reduce problem drinking. EDC’s Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Abuse and Violence Prevention(HEC) has recently published a case study that describes the initiative, Multifaceted Social Norms Approach to Reduce High-Risk Drinking: Lessons from Hobart and William Smith Colleges. Written by H.

Community Service as a Prevention Strategy

Community service programs—when combined with curriculum—not only promote community values and good citizenship, they may also protect students from risky health behaviors during adolescence. When New York City middle school students’ community service work (three hours per week) was combined with health instruction, both their violent behavior and their high-risk sexual activity dropped significantly.

An Environmental Approach to Campus Drinking

HEC is working to move colleges away from a primarily educational approach to high-risk drinking and toward a broader, public health approach. HEC collaborates with college students, administrators, and faculty to help them re-examine and expand their responses to student drinking. In addition to serving as a clearinghouse and publisher of prevention resources, HEC provides training and technical assistance to individual campuses.

Youth Substance Abuse Prevention

The Gloucester Prevention Network (GPN) helps teens develop a citywide petition effort to outlaw cigarette vending machines.

Bridging Schools and Communities

The prevention work of EDC’s Health and Human Development Programs (EDC/HHD) spans the spectrum, addressing public health challenges related to alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use; HIV infection; injuries; and violence. We work with communities; schools; and state, local, and national agencies in both the United States and many other countries.

Injury Prevention

While high-profile school shootings dominate national headlines, a much greater threat to adolescent health is going less reported: Teen suicide rates have tripled over the last 35 years, outpacing homicide rates among 15-19 year olds by as much as four to one. Suicide is now the second leading cause of death among teens, following automobile crashes.