Dean’s Distinguished Lecture: “Implementation of Preventive Interventions for Youth Drug Use in the International Arena: A Road Paved With Good Intentions”

Join the College of Education for a Dean’s Distinguished Lecture event featuring Eric C. Brown, Ph.D., professor at the University of Miami Miller School of Medicine.

Although the knowledge of the etiology of youth drug use (i.e., identification of risk and protective factors) and the development of preventive interventions to deter youth drug use have increased dramatically around the world in recent years, the dissemination and implementation of these preventive interventions have not met sufficient reach or fidelity to achieve large-scale effectiveness. Several reasons for this include poor adaptation of interventions for new countries or new target populations, limited financial resources, insufficient organizational capacity to “root” interventions for sustained use and, generally, a lack of knowledge of what works in dissemination and implementation science.

Dr. Brown’s presentation will offer some examples and challenges facing countries throughout the world to implement drug use preventive interventions for youth. It will conclude with a summary of a recent Organization of American States-funded project to identify and catalog youth drug preventive interventions in Latin America and the Caribbean.

This lecture is supported by the Gordon Lippitt Centennial Lectureship.

Eric C. Brown, Ph.D., is a professor in the University of Miami’s Department of Public Health Sciences at the Miller School of Medicine. Dr. Brown is the director of the Ph.D. program in Prevention Science and Community Health and Principal Investigator of the Prevention Education and Research in Latin America group, which focuses on the adaptation, dissemination and implementation of preventive interventions for youth alcohol, tobacco and other drug use in Latinx and Caribbean youth populations.