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Using a Developmentally Sensitive Approach to Prevent Teen Drinking
Understanding and addressing alcohol use within a developmental framework was one of the goals outlined in the Surgeon General’s Call to Action to Prevent and Reduce Underage Drinking released last March. Experts from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) will explain what that means for community coalitions and prevention specialists at CADCA’s National Leadership Forum XVIII next week.
“If you’re going to work in the community on underage drinking, it’s important to understand the phenomenon of underage drinking and see how it fits into growing up in the United States. So that perhaps you can do a better job of intervening and approach it in a way that’s consistent with a person’s development,” explained Dr. Vivian Fader, Deputy Director of the NIAAA’s Division of Epidemiology and Prevention Research, and one of the presenters at CADCA’s Forum.
Dr. Faden and Ralph Hingson, Sc.D., Director of the NIAAA’s Division of Epidemiology and Prevention Research, will lead a workshop entitled “The Alcohol-Adolescent Connection: What We Know About It and What We Can Do About It.” During the workshop, they will discuss the unique processes that take place during adolescence and how community coalitions can apply a developmentally sensitive approach to their underage drinking prevention and intervention efforts.
Dr. Faden said adolescence is a time of dramatic changes—both biological and social. That, combined with the many social transitions teens go through, such as transitioning from elementary to middle school to high school, can increase social pressures, stresses, and expectations that contribute to underage drinking.
“We need to consider development when we design interventions and we can’t have a one size fits all approach for youth of all ages,” she noted. “You can’t use the same approach for a 10 year old that you would use on a 19 year old.”
The Forum workshop will not only explore strategies and interventions that coalitions can use, but also how the NIAAA developed this approach. Topics will include human development, epidemiology, and the physiological effects of alcohol.
In addition to this important workshop, the Acting Surgeon General
Rear Admiral Steven K. Galson, M.D., M.P.H., will provide a keynote
speech at the Forum on February 14 to discuss the Surgeon
General’s Call to Action to Prevent and Reduce Underage
Drinking. CADCA’s National Leadership Forum XVIII will be held
February 11-14, 2008 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in
Washington, D.C. Click here for more information.
Source: cadca.org/CoalitionsOnline/article.asp?id=1765
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