"Where Science Meets The Street"
~ D.A.R.E.’s New Curricula, Take Charge of Your Life,
Delivers the Latest in Prevention and Education ~
As kids nationwide continue to use illicit drugs and binge on alcohol,
there is good news: Thousands of police officers are being trained to
deliver Take Charge of Your Life, the new science-based D.A.R.E prevention
program. As one Cleveland officer put it, “It’s where science
meets the street.”
D.A.R.E.’s new programming for 7th and 9th grade students is
based on the latest drug abuse prevention and education research. Now
in its final year of evaluation by the University of Akron with funding
from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the longitudinal study of the
new D.A.R.E. curricula is the nation’s largest and most comprehensive
prevention research effort to date, far outranking any other previous
study in both scope and sophistication.
With nearly 20,000 students being monitored in 6 cities for five years,
the study is producing rich data sets and one of the most promising
theoretical models of prevention. “We are very encouraged at the
positive impact that the prevention model underlying the Take Charge
of Your Life curricula is continuing to show on the attitudes, intentions,
and beliefs of the students receiving the program,” says Dr. Zili
Sloboda, the principal investigator of the multimillion dollar study.
“The enthusiasm of the officers delivering the new curricula
is overwhelming,” says Dr. Joseph Williams of the University of
Akron, who spent six month extensively interviewing the officers, “DARE
officers used to lecture to kids in the past but with this new program,
they are coaching kids in real life situations. They’re showing
kids MRI images of brains on drugs; they’re true prevention professionals
armed with first-rate prevention research and it gives them confidence.”
According to Dr. Sloboda, the joining of Take Charge of Your Life,
the latest in prevention science excellence, with the D.A.R.E. network
is ideal “The D.A.R.E. network has the ability to diffuse through
national training new and effective prevention programs AND to monitor
the quality of delivery,” says Sloboda, “Simply put, there
is no comparable national prevention delivery network like D.A.R.E.
in the US. The existence of D.A.R.E. is an opportunity to bring the
latest in prevention to millions of children and adolescents in both
a timely and a quality fashion.”
Information contact: Nancy Dudley at 202-368-2637 or DivineNWD@aol.com
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