Reimagining Prevention: Stopping Addiction Before It Starts

Could teaching four-year-olds how to make friends help prevent addiction? An innovative approach in the Wyandanch School District suggests it might. 

This program helps students from pre-kindergarten to high school develop skills to prevent addiction. It begins with social-emotional learning for young children, using puppets to teach friendship and conflict resolution, and progresses to decision-making skills and substance use awareness in later years.

Discover how this approach is transforming addiction prevention.  

Podcast Guest

• Jennifer Quinn, Wyandanch School District

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“We go into the schools pre-K to senior year and our first couple of years pre-K to elementary is really social-emotional learning and teaching them how to set goals, how to make friends, how to deal with conflict, so that when they get into that middle school and high school then we start to include that substance use prevention aspect.”

—Jennifer Quinn, Wyandanch School District

Call the 24/7 HOPEline at 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369).