Surrounded, if socially distanced, by family, friends and colleagues, Marcie Seidel received the Hope Taft Prevention Advocacy Award Friday, August 14th at the annual meeting of the Prevention Action Alliance board of directors.

“Only a handful of people are given the Hope Taft Prevention Advocacy Award,” said Dave Bell, president-elect of the board. “In its entire 17-year history, it has been awarded only five times to those who follow in Mrs. Taft’s footsteps by doing great service to others in advocacy for prevention. Before today, only five people—a governor, a U.S. Senator, the president of a flagship university, a top state executive, and the state’s treasurer—have met the rigorous criteria for receiving the Hope Taft Prevention Advocacy Award.”

Now, Marcie has become the sixth recipient of the Hope Taft Prevention Advocacy Award for her tireless service to prevention.

“Marcie, you have played your role in prevention,” said Mr. Bell. “For that, I thank you on behalf of the entire board of directors and the staff of Prevention Action Alliance.”

Please join us in congratulating Marcie for receiving this award and in thanking her for her dedication to the welfare of others.

Join us and special guest Jill Smock from the Ohio Chemical Dependency Professionals Board for a virtual conversation about prevention credentials. Grab a coffee or tea, have a seat at a table, and join us.

Our two most recent coffee klatsches—on the role of prevention in addressing systemic racism and school reopenings—can be found on our YouTube page.

OYLPN, in partnership with the Ohio Department of Mental Health & Addiction Services and Ohio University's Voinovich School of Leadership & Public Affairs, has released the Request for Proposals (RFP) for this year's Youth Participation in Community Change Efforts: A Study Group (Study Group).

Past participants have produced white papers, conference presentations, and more recently, an explainer video and infographic to introduce the value to youth-led programs to diverse audiences inside and outside of the prevention field. In this way, Study Group participants have the opportunity to develop the capacity of Ohio's adult allies while deepening their own understanding of the theories that inform youth-led programs.

To learn more about this funding opportunity, please read the RFP preview or apply on Survey Monkey. Questions are due by Tuesday, September 1, 2020, at 5:00 p.m. to [email protected].

There's no doubt about it. School will look and feel different for teens across the United States. Whether teens in your community are going to wear backpacks and masks to sit in desks at school or they're going to wear headphones and sit in front of computers at home, it's going to be difficult on them, teachers, and parents.

To help, we compiled expert recommendations on how to ensure that homeschooling is less stressful. Those recommendations are featured in the latest Know! Parent Tip—Know! Six R's for Less Stress Homeschooling.

We're dedicated to our mission of leading healthy communities in the prevention of substance misuse and the promotion of mental health wellness. To that end, we've created fact sheets and infographics that you can use and share to educate your community about prevention. These fact sheets work well in print and online.

We've created resources on the following topics:

Health and community advocates from around the country, including Prevention Action Alliance, held a virtual press event today to send strong messages to the nation's governors that #COVID19 alcohol deregulations are dangerous, place alcohol industry profits above public health and safety, and must not become the new normal.

The American Heart Association has issued a statement urging the FDA to robustly regulate e-cigarettes in light of new surveys that show that more than half of high school seniors in the U.S. have tried e-cigarettes and about a third report currently using them.

“The FDA should prohibit the sale of all flavored tobacco products and eliminate loopholes in existing policy that allow flavored disposable e-cigarettes and flavored e-liquids used in refillable nicotine systems to remain on the market.”

Vitamin E acetate, used frequently in illicit e-cigarette products and connected to the e-cigarette lung injury epidemic last year, is again in the headlines as Minnesotans are hospitalized with more lung injuries after using these products. So far, 12 patients ages 14 to 46 were hospitalized since June.

Mark McCown, an attorney in Ironton, Ohio, answers readers’ legal questions. Recently, a couple of parents wrote to ask if they could host a party and give teens alcohol in their own home. His response, “To put it bluntly, you can go to jail if you host this party,” was strong and gave readers no doubts about the legality of social hosting.

Now, if only people similarly appreciated the health consequences of underage drinking.

Scientists have found that zebrafish can suffer from nicotine withdrawal. When exposed to nicotine, the zebrafish are bolder and have better locomotive skills. When the nicotine is removed, the zebrafish lost boldness and movement, presumably because of increases in anxious behaviors.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions?