NEWSLETTER

Resources to Help You Help Your Loved One

Practical, research-backed information straight to your inbox every month.

📅 It's National Prevention Week and the Partnership is here to help families stay informed and connect with loved ones.  

A Message From Our CEO, Creighton Drury

"In my many years working with young people, and in my current role leading Partnership to End Addiction, I have come to recognize that it is much more effective to focus on promoting the things we want, rather than on preventing the things we don’t want. This paradigm shift can make all the difference."

Everyone's Looking for Answers on Fentanyl

Today is National Fentanyl Awareness Day, a day to spread awareness and education about this deadly substance that is increasingly affecting young people. Award-winning author and journalist Sam Quinones, whose books “Dreamland” and “The Least of Us” explore the nation’s opioid epidemic, returns to “Heart of the Matter” to talk with Elizabeth Vargas about some of the most popular questions our listeners have about fentanyl. They discuss why fentanyl is in the drug supply, and how tools like overdose reversal drug naloxone and fentanyl test strips can help. They also talk about what happens if you touch fentanyl – a topic that is often misunderstood. 

Heart of the Matter with Elizabeth Vargas is available via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Podcasts and drugfree.org.

To learn more about fentanyl, counterfeit pills and resources to help your family:

Visit our Fentanyl Information Center

10 Tips for Promoting Health and Resilience in Your Child

Here are some positive parenting practices to help promote your child’s well-being.

1.  Start early – It’s never too early to encourage healthy attitudes, emotions and behaviors in your children and create a foundation to learn, grow and adapt.

• Talk to your kids about medication safety and practice keeping medications, alcohol and other substances out of reach. 

2.  Know the facts – Learn about what in your children’s lives can promote or get in the way of their healthy development. 

• Get information from sources you trust: friends, relatives, your children’s teachers and healthcare providers. 

3.  Be a good model for health and resilience – Children watch what their parents do and learn things like how to interact with others, how to respond to challenges and how to take care of themselves.

• Model taking care of your own health and well-being.
• When facing your own challenges, demonstrate effective coping and relationship skills. 

4.  Communicate openly and honestly – This allows your child to feel safe coming to you with questions or problems and confident that what you tell them will be true and honest. 

5.  Share your expectations 

• Set clear boundaries and limits. 
• Follow through on the agreed consequences. 
• If it is clear that your expectations are based in love and concern rather than a desire to control them, they will know that you truly care about their health and safety and will be more likely to respect your rules.

6.  Monitor their behavior – Monitoring and supervising, done from a place of love and care, can help you recognize and address potential threats to their safety and well-being.

• Learn about their friends and where they spend time. 
• Ask who they follow on social media and why. 

7.  Take a health, not a punishment, approach – Focus on supporting your children’s health and safety rather than punishing unhealthy or unsafe behaviors.  

8.  Encourage healthy risk-taking and emotional expression – It’s normal and natural for children to take risks and to express a broad range of emotions – positive and negative. 

• Guide them to do so in safe and healthy ways. 
• Helping your children face challenges that go beyond their comfort zone will teach them to adapt to new and complex situations, manage setbacks and develop new skills.  

9.  Use positive reinforcement – When your children engage in desired behaviors, reward them with positive feedback about their efforts – not the outcomes.

10.  Know your children’s risk level and respond accordingly – Use our Risk Assessment tool to help understand whether your children are susceptible to substance use risk and associated mental health problems and know when and how to seek help for them if needed.  

Learn more in our Parent's Guide to Raising Resilient Kids

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