Highlights from Prevention Day 2015

03/09/2015

Participants write their “I Choose” prevention messages and have their photos taken with their signs to show their commitment to SAMHSA’s National Prevention Week 2015.
SAMHSA Administrator, Pamela S. Hyde, provides opening remarks at Prevention Day, February 2, 2015.
Members of the Kumit Bobrae Coalition, from the Marshall Islands, close Prevention Day with music and dance. The Coalition uses music and dance to prevent underage drinking and driving while intoxicated.
Lieutenant Mike Muni, a federal Project Officer within SAMHSA and for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy’s Drug Free Communities Support Program, provides the keynote address at Prevention Day, sharing his experience in West Africa working as a public health officer on the recent Ebola crisis.
Participants browse and pick up resources during SAMHSA’s Prevention Day.
CSAP Director, Frances M. Harding, welcomes participants to SAMHSA’s Prevention Day, February 2, 2015.

This February, more than 1,600 prevention practitioners, community leaders, researchers, scientists, consumers, and advocates in the behavioral health field convened in National Harbor, Maryland, to participate in SAMHSA’s 11th Annual Prevention Day — “The Power of Prevention: Making Impact in a Time of Change.” Attendees were able to participate in workshops and institutes on a variety of topics, including prevention efforts directed by young adults, linking prevention activities and healthcare systems, using social media to prevent substance abuse and HIV, suicide prevention, and working with service members, veterans, and their families. The event also featured a Cyber Café, which participants visited to test SAMHSA-developed tools, such as the “Talk. They Hear You.” mobile application and “The Sound of Your Voice” video, both developed to help parents talk to youth and young adults.

Frances M. Harding, Director of SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP), welcomed everyone to Prevention Day and introduced this year’s promotional video for National Prevention Week, which features SAMHSA grantees and the young people with whom they work, talking about what prevention means to them. The keynote address was delivered by Lieutenant Mike Muni from CSAP’s Division of Community Programs, who discussed how he was inspired by his experience while supporting global Ebola prevention efforts as a Public Information Officer in Monrovia, the capital of Liberia, for the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, Monrovia Medical Unit Team 1. Using these personal stories, he stressed to all public health and safety professionals and participants that prevention work being done in the field is making a difference, and in many cases, is saving lives.