Background: The 2018 legalisation of cannabis in Canada sparked concern and conversation about the potential negative impacts of youth cannabis use. It is clear that young people are already engaging in cannabis use for a variety of reasons; therefore, youth cannabis education is desirable to promote harm reduction and reduce the risk of adverse…

Microorganisms have the potential to induce diseases characterized by rapid transmission and high mortality rates. Today, there persist medical unresolved issues, including the emergence of antibiotic resistance in pathogenic bacteria. This phenomenon stands as one of the paramount global threats to public health in the twenty-first century. A…

Similar to national trends, in Illinois, fatal opioid overdoses have risen. Black men (35+) outrank all other racial subgroups for the highest rate of fatal opioid overdoses in the state. To address this, Prevention First and the Illinois Department of Human Services developed a public health education campaign to support increasing enrollment in…

Legalization of non-medical cannabis in Canada was intended to protect youth health and safety by limiting access and raising awareness of safety and risks. The purpose of this qualitative research was to explore youths' perceptions of their cannabis health literacy and future educational needs. A convenience sample of youth aged 13 to 18 residing…

What does a community-centered vision for substance use prevention and early intervention services in schools look like? Healthy Schools Campaign community advisory board members -- including education, healthcare and community leaders and youth advocates -- tackled this question while developing a new framing for addressing youth substance use…

Purpose: Alcohol, tobacco, marijuana and other drugs use typically increases in prevalence and frequency during middle and late adolescence. School health instruction often focusses on providing facts and rarely provides tools for addressing the psychosocial risk factors needed to prevent substance use. The purpose of this paper is to report about…

Background: Synthetic and other drugs have become available to teens, yet little is known about risk factors of use. Objective: To examine adolescent use of one class of synthetic drugs and its association with perceptions about its prevalence, access, and risk of substance use. Methods: Adolescents from a convenience sample of 104 middle and high…

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention established School Health Profiles (Profiles) in 1996 to monitor school health policies and practices in secondary schools in states and school districts across the United States. Profiles is a system of surveys conducted biennially in even-numbered years and provides data on the following topics:…

Aims: This article reports on findings to emerge from a project examining YouTube 'drug videos' in the light of an emerging literature on the relationship between YouTube and health education. The aim of this article is to describe the variety of discourses circulated by the 'drug videos' available on YouTube and to consider the implications of…

This collection of fact sheets includes: (1) Alcohol and Drug Use; (2) Bullying and Suicidal Behaviors; (3) Dietary Behaviors; (4) Disease Prevention and Health Care Access; (5) Injury Risk and Violence Behaviors; (6) Physical Inactivity; (7) Sexual Behaviors; (8) Tobacco Use Behaviors; and (9) Weight Management. [For "[West Virginia Youth…

This collection of fact sheets includes: (1) Alcohol and Drug Use; (2) Bullying and Suicidal Behaviors; (3) Dietary Behaviors; (4) Disease Prevention and Health Care Access; (5) Injury Risk and Violence; (6) Physical Inactivity; (7) Sexual Behaviors; (8) Tobacco Use; and (9) Weight Management. [For "[West Virginia Youth Risk Behavior/School…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the development of medicine education by examining pupils' perceptions of medicines and medicine use. Design/methodology/approach: Fourth graders' (n=51, aged 10-11) perceptions about medicines and their use were collected in one school through mixed-methods using a questionnaire, a drawing…

Health educators in elementary and secondary schools should seek collaborations with teachers of other subjects to enhance health education curriculum. The strategy described in this article details a potential collaboration between health education and language arts units. The activity enhances both drug education knowledge gains and creative…

It's a drug prevention conversation--and program--that was largely missing as recently as a decade ago in most middle and high schools. In those days, the principal concern of health educators and disciplinarians alike was to keep students from misusing alcohol and illegal street drugs such as ecstasy, cocaine and even heroine. But driven by the…

This collection of fact sheets includes: (1) Alcohol and Drug Use among Middle School Students in West Virginia; (2) Bullying and Suicidal among Middle School Students in West Virginia; (3) Chronic Disease and Disease Prevention among Middle School Students in West Virginia; (4) Dietary Behaviors among Middle School Students in West Virginia; (5)…