The Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) invests in mentoring programs and services to help ensure positive outcomes for youth. Successful mentoring relationships have been shown to increase youth's self-esteem, improve academic achievement, and steer them away from delinquency, substance use, and other high-risk…

Despite the elevation of the opioid crisis in the U.S. to the level of a nationwide public health emergency in 2017, the number of opioid-involved overdose deaths has continued to rise. The impact of the opioid epidemic extends well beyond the tragedy of fatal overdose. Nonfatal overdose can result in brain injury and permanent disability, and…

In Pennsylvania, subgrantee Philadelphia Works, Inc. partnered with JEVS Human Services to implement the National Health Emergency (NHE) demonstration grant. JEVS Human Services offers both employment and training services and behavioral health treatment and recovery services. By developing partnerships with behavioral health providers, the…

Community health workers (CHWs) and peer recovery specialists (PRSs) can play an important role in meeting the health care needs of people with opioid use disorder. Registered apprenticeship programs, an "earn while you learn" approach, can help build a certified workforce of CHWs and PRSs by providing classroom and on-the-job training.…

The Pennsylvania Department of Labor and Industry (L&I) partnered with the Pennsylvania State College of Medicine (Penn State) to create a Project Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes (ECHO) series for employers. The ECHO model, which originated in the medical field, provides virtual clinics led by expert specialist teams to discuss…

New developments in the treatment of mothers and infants affected by opioid addiction point to the promising effects of interventions that adopt a developmental perspective, occur concurrently with addiction treatment, and target the parent-infant relationship as early as possible. In this article, the authors provide general guidelines for…

This article shares the story of Lucy Bryson, who was hooked on crack cocaine and heroin when she was 17, and was working the streets to fund her addiction. Her future looked bleak when she was imprisoned four years ago but a project that builds trust and responsibility in young people by teaching them to work with animals has transformed her…

This article presents current statistics on nonmedical use of both categories of prescription medications by high school and college students. The incidence of nonmedical use of prescription medications continues to increase among high school and college students. Two categories of drugs that are commonly used for reasons other than those for…

This report presents the 2008 National Drug Control Strategy of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy. The overarching goal of the President's Strategy is to reduce drug use in America through a balanced approach that focuses on stopping use before it starts, healing America's drug users, and disrupting the market for illegal…

As part of an ongoing ethnographic study, this paper aims to consider the practice of poetry, "sher-o-shayari", as naturalistic peer learning among a group of heroin addicts in Yamuna Bazaar, New Delhi. By examining meanings given to "sher-o-shayari" and experiences of participating in the practice, this article makes the claim…

This article describes a Web-based therapeutic workplace intervention designed to promote heroin and cocaine abstinence and train and employ participants as data entry operators. Patients are paid to participate in training and then to perform data entry jobs in a therapeutic workplace business. Salary is linked to abstinence by requiring patients…

Methadone maintenance is a relatively new method for treating heroin addiction. Controversy and questions remain about the drug itself and its use of methadone. The author was engaged by The Drug Abuse Council to prepare these descriptions of four methadone programs and the accompanying summary. The evolution of these programs is examined, and the…

The Treatment Evaluation Project was established to evaluate the feasibility of using behavioral treatment in conjunction with methadone maintenance to improve the effectiveness of methadone treatment. Over 100 outpatients were accepted into treatment and randomly assigned to one of four behavioral treatment modalities in addition to the usual…

This project is part of a multi-year program to gather detailed information about substance-use patterns among Texans. Investigators interviewed a total of 946 youths, age 10 to 17, as they entered Texas Youth Commission (TYC) reception facilities. Results show that 81% of TYC youth have used illicit substances--51% in their last month on the…

This paper describes a research project sponsored and funded by the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics and Affairs (INL) on substance abuse and treatment in ten countries. The purpose of the study was to identify promising practices in drug treatment in Europe, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. The steps taken to complete this…