Prevention Profiles: Take Five

Diane Fedorchak, from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, is our guest this month. Fedorchak -- who is in long-term recovery from addiction -- is very involved in the school's community. Currently, she serves as director of the Brief Alcohol Screening and Intervention for College Students (BASICS) program, coordinator of the Fresh & Sober program and an active member of the Campus and Community Coalition to Reduce High-Risk Drinking. On this episode, she talks about the challenges with implementing the BASICS program, the recovery movement on college campuses, and much more.

Dave Closson, who now works with the Center for the Application of Prevention Technologies, joins us this episode. Closson's background includes serving in the Illinois National Guard, as a campus police officer at Eastern Illinois University and as Assistant Director of the Illinois Higher Education Center for Alcohol, Other Drug and Violence Prevention. Drawing from these experiences, he discusses what prevention professionals need to know about students who return from military deployment, challenges he faced trying to connect law enforcement and prevention on campus, plus much more.

M. Dolores Cimini, PhD., who serves as director for the Center for Behavioral Health Promotion and Applied Research at the University at Albany, The State University of New York, New York is our guest this episode. She discusses why it's important to evaluate prevention products, gives advice about working with students, and much more.

Sean Fearns, the Chief of DEA's Community Outreach and Prevention Support Section, is this month's guest. During the episode, Fearns talks prevention, his agency's efforts to reach out to college students, challenges with getting law enforcement and prevention professionals to work together, and much more.

This month's episode features Dr. Sally Linowski from the University of Massachussets Amherst. Linowski, an Associate Dean of Students, as well as an adjunct assistant professor at the UMass Amherst School of Public Health and Health Sciences, talks about the challenges in building and maintaining a relationship between the campus and the community, the easiest and hardest parts of strategic planning, and more.

Dr. Eric Davidson talks about the importance of biennial reviews, the challenges some schools may have with requirements, and more on this episode.

This week, the University of Arizona's Dr. Peggy Glider, who serves as coordinator for Evaluation and Research at the school's Campus Health Service, is our guest. Topics include: the importance of program evaluation, challenges around the process, her advice for for campus drug prevention professionals, and more.

Dr. Jason Kilmer from the University of Washington is our guest this episode. Topics include: the impact legalized marijuana has had on colleges in his state, the differences between alcohol prevention and drug prevention, what he loses sleep over (when it comes to college drug prevention), and more.

Frances (Fran) Harding, Director of the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention at the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), discusses her early days in the prevention field, college substance abuse, and how parents can play a role in preventing college-age loved ones from abusing drugs.

Dr. Nora Volkow, director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), recently sat down with Rich Lucey, a prevention program manager at the Drug Enforcement Administration, to talk about the upcoming National Drug and Alcohol Facts week, drug use among college students, her advice to prevention professionals, and more.