Substance Use Prevention, Treatment, & Policy

Catalog description

This course will focus on the public health response to substance misuse and addiction. We will critically examine substance use-related policies, including evaluating their positive impacts as well as their potentially damaging consequences, particularly for racial and ethnic minority communities. We will discuss the key tenets of mutual help programs, behavioral treatments, and pharmacotherapies for addictions and discuss their efficacy, cost effectiveness, population reach, and capacities for addressing health inequities. Finally, we will discuss how a range of substance use prevention and harm reduction programs are developed and evaluate evidence for their effectiveness in the context of existing health inequities.Enrollment restricted to juniors, seniors and graduate students. Others with instructor permission.