Preventing Harmful Substance Use: The Evidence Base for Policy and Practice

The prevention of harm from drug use, both legal and illegal, is a major concern to government departments and clinicians throughout the world. Recently, much new research has been conducted regarding global levels and patterns of drug-related harm, on common risk factors with other social problems (e.g. mental health, crime) and on the effectiveness of wide range of intervention strategies. There is a need to summarise and synthesise this new knowledge for use in a range of disciplines. Preventing Harmful Substance Use offers the most comprehensive and up-to-date advice available on the prevention of drug and alcohol abuse. Contributors provide authoritative, science-based reviews of knowledge on their areas of expertise, and make clear recommendations for the future of prevention policy and practice. A final section draws the work together and offers a framework for an integrated science of prevention.

Paul J. Gruenewald is a Senior Research Scientist and Scientific Director of Prevention Research Center (PRC) in Berkeley, California, a division of the US-based Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE). Research at PIRE is funded by games and contracts from the National Institutes of Health, National Institutes of Justice, Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, and other national, state, local and private funding agencies. Dr. Gruenewald is Principal Investigator of a Center grant funded by the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism to study 'Environmental Approaches to Prevention', and a Merit award recipient for his studies of “Alcohol Outlets and Violence.

Wendy Loxley is an Associate Professor at the National Drug Research Institute, at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia, where she ahs been employed for fifteen years. Much of her early research career was concerned with addressing the risk of blood-borne viruses to Australian injecting drug users, and she has been involved in a number of large quantitative studies exploring this issue. Other research experiences include monitoring illicit drug use among police detainees, the evaluation of community-based approaches to drug law enforcement, and the use of testing and vaccination to prevent hepatitis C and other blood-borne viruses among injectors.

Tim Stockwell is currently Director of the Centre for Addictions Research of BC, Canada, and, until mid-2004, was Director of Australia’s National Drug Research Institute based at Curtin University in Western Australia. He recently co-edited the critically acclaimed Wiley book International Handbook of Alcohol Dependence and Problems with Nick Heather and Tim Peter. He has published widely in the field of addiction studies and has particular expertise in the areas of alcohol and other drug epidemiology and prevention policy.

John Winston Toumbourou is Associated Professor at the Department of Paediatrics, University of Melbourne, and a Senior Researchers at the Center for Adolescent Health, within the Murdoch Children's Research Institute. John is a founding member and the past Chair of the College of Health Psychologists within the Australian Psychological Society. He is a Principal Investigator on a number of studies investigating healthy youth development, including the Australian Temperament Project, and the International Youth Development study.