SAFE Coalition Member Attends National Prevention Network Conference

The National Prevention Network conference was held August 27-30, 2018 at the Boston Park Plaza. The conference was three days, complete with keynotes, breakouts, and networking opportunities. The conference theme for 2018 was A Revolution in Prevention Understanding the Past, Informing the Future.

The National Prevention Network (NPN) Conference (formerly called the NPN Prevention Research Conference) has a long-standing history. The first conference was held in 1988 in Kansas City, Missouri and has been conducted on an annual basis ever since in various cities around the country. Over the years, the conference has grown in size, hosting 700-1,000 participants.

The National Prevention Network (NPN) Conference hosts federal, state and local professionals from the substance abuse prevention field and related disciplines. Participants included: prevention providers, school personnel, government agency representatives and directors, law enforcement personnel, policy makers, coalition leaders and members, counselors, health education specialists, social workers, and high school students.

The purpose of the National Prevention Network (NPN) Conference is to highlight the latest research in the substance abuse prevention field. It provides a forum for prevention professionals, coalition leaders, researchers, and federal partners to share research, best practices and promising evaluation results for the purpose of integrating research into prevention practice.

The SAFE Coalition participant attended sessions that encouraged the coalition to focus on the following: Why Is It So Hard to get Attention on Prevention? Reflections of a Lifelong Bureaucrat; Prevention – Sustaining Our Focus in a Year of Change; Effective Prevention for Reducing e-cigarette Use Among Youth; Our Hidden Partners in Prevention: Top Ten Things Parents Need to Know about Alcohol, Marijuana, and Other Drugs; Early Warning Systems in the Age of the Opioid Epidemic – Information in Action; Underage Drinking: Still a Challenge, Still a Priority, Still a Success; There Has Always Been Drinking in America: Alcohol, History, Culture, and what it all means for Prevention; The regulatory options for state cannabis legalization: What prevention needs to know; Using a Trauma Informed Lens to inform Substance Misuse Prevention; Where we Began, Where We Are, and Where We’re Going: The Evolution of SAMHSA’s Evidence Based Prevention Programming; and Reducing Social Access and Shaping Future Enforcement Procedures.  For more information on the SAFE Coalition please call 319-293-3334 ext. 1017 or email at safe.coalition@van-burencsd.org.