Johnstown, PA (March 21, 2016) –The Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board (PLCB) opened its annual two-day alcohol education conference with a full schedule of activities, including a featured presentation from The Learning Lamp. This year’s conference, “Underage and Dangerous Drinking: Sharing Resources–Sharing Outcomes,” discusses how underage and high-risk drinking issues are addressed by individual organizations and through collaboration among them—from how partnerships are formed to how unifying efforts create positive outcomes.
“Combatting underage and dangerous drinking requires collaboration involving many different groups – community leaders, law enforcement, educators, parents and more. It’s important that these groups get together and share strategies and solutions that are proven to work,” said PLCB Chairman Tim Holden.
The conference, which is being held in Gettysburg, brings together more than 200 professionals, including law enforcement personnel and educators to discuss strategies to reduce and prevent dangerous and underage drinking. Funded by a two-year grant from PLCB,The Learning Lamp is the first prevention provider in Pennsylvania to deliver the evidence-based Alcohol Literacy Challenge™ (ALC) program. Listed in SAMHSA’s National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices, ALC is grounded in years of research surrounding Alcohol Expectancy Theory.
Using contemporary images of alcohol advertising, ALC challenges youth participants to dissect media messages that tout the perceived “benefits” of drinking alcohol. The program then outlines fact from fiction as students discover the true physiological effects of drinking and the brain science of alcohol expectancies. The 90-minute, interactive program allows participants to redefine their own beliefs about alcohol. ALC is proven to reduce both the amount and frequency of drinking alcohol among high school and college-aged participants.
“Alcohol Literacy Challenge™ takes a very different approach to alcohol prevention by inviting youth participants to reexamine the so-called “benefits” of drinking alcohol and compare those perceptions to the true physical effects of alcohol on the brain and body,” said Alexis Wynn, ALC coordinator and a PA-certified teacher in Health and Physical Education at The Learning Lamp. “The buy-in from teens occurs because they draw their own conclusions. They are not just being told by someone else that drinking alcohol is bad for you, don’t do it.”
Alcohol Literacy Challenge™ was developed by Dr. Peter DeBenedittis who speaks to thousands of students and trains hundreds of prevention specialists across America each year about media and the expectancy effects it creates. Dr. DeBenedittis has consulted to the White House Office on Drug Control Policy, the Centers for Disease Control, the American Medical Association and the National Cancer Institute. He is partnering with The Learning Lamp to advance studies that will measure the long-term impact of ALC on participants in Cambria and Somerset counties during the 2016-17 school year.
The Learning Lamp is a leading provider of alcohol, drugs, violence and gambling prevention programming in the Cambria-Somerset region. In 2015, The Learning Lamp’s prevention teams delivered evidence- and research-based programs to 6,314 students in grades 3-12 in 17 public school districts and six non-public schools in Cambria, Somerset, Bedford and Indiana counties. Programs included: Too Good for Drugs (grades 3-5), Botvin LifeSkills Training Program (grades 6-8), Alcohol Literacy Challenge (grades 9-12), Aggression Replacement Training (grades 9-12) and Wanna Bet? and Too Much to Lose (grades 6-12).
In response to requests from area educators for a prevention program specific to heroin, The Learning Lamp recently partnered with the Weller Health Education Center in Allentown, Pennsylvania, on a proposal that would fund expansion of the Center’s “Science Behind Addiction” and “Heroin: How Did I Get Here?” opioids prevention programs to Cambria and Somerset counties. Pending approval of funding, the pilot programs would serve 1,000 high school students from 10 participating school districts in the area in the 2016-17 school year.
For more information on The Learning Lamp’s prevention programs, email Lisa Stofko, prevention programs manager, lstofko@thelearninglamp.org or call 814-262-0732 ext. 249.
The Learning Lamp is a nonprofit organization with a mission to engage all children in the support they need to succeed. We deliver high quality programs that are affordable and accessible to families of all income levels. The Learning Lamp served 30,711 children from 57 school districts and 53 non-public and private schools and other organizations in 17 Pennsylvania counties and one county in Maryland in 2015.
Our programs include: one-to-one tutoring; before/after school programs; portable classrooms aimed at building math and science skills; alternative education programs for at-risk students; evidence-based prevention programs; online learning and credit recovery; SAT preparation; educationally-focused child care; literacy-based preschool programs; and grant writing and project consulting for schools.
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