A place for parents to ask questions and get answers from various experts in underage drinking prevention.
Dr. Rob Turrisi is currently a Professor at Penn State University with a joint appointment in the Department of Biobehavioral Health and the Prevention Research Center.
His research focus is on the prevention of underage drinking, drunk driving, and heavy binge-type drinking. From 1988 to 2004 Turrisi was a Director of the Prevention of Adolescent Drinking Program at the University at Albany and later a professor at Boise State, where he was a PI or Co-PI on prevention research grants totaling over $7,000,000 from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the American Cancer Society (ACS) for his work in the areas of drinking and cancer prevention. Since coming to Penn State in 2004, Turrisi has been a PI or Co-PI on over $5,000,000 in research funds from the National Institutes of Health, NIAAA, National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), ACS, and the National Cancer Institute (NCI) for his alcohol and cancer prevention work.
In addition, Dr. Turrisi has numerous publications on these topics in The American Journal of Public Health, Pediatrics, Psychology of Addictive Behaviors, Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research, Journal of Behavioral Medicine, Cancer, Archives of Dermatology, Journal of Applied Social Psychology, Journal of Youth and Adolescence, Multivariate Behavioral Research, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and Journal of Studies on Alcohol. Dr. Turrisi has also authored informational booklets for parents on how to talk with their adolescent and emerging adult sons and daughters about alcohol that is currently in use at numerous cites around the USA and Canada. Dr. Turrisi has also served as a consultant & grant reviewer for the National Institute of Health, National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism, and the National Cancer Institute.
MADD welcomes James C. Fell, a Senior Program Director with the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE) in Calverton, MD, to answer questions regarding the research behind the 21 minimum drinking age law and reducing underage drinking. Mr. Fell recently completed research on grants from the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA) and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) that assessed the status and enforcement of the various components of the Minimum Legal Drinking Age 21 (MLDA 21) laws in the States and determined the relationship of those laws to teenage traffic deaths. He is currently studying the effectiveness of graduated driver licensing laws under a grant from the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHHD) and conducting research on responsible beverage service, alcohol ignition interlock laws, high visibility enforcement and alcohol monitoring devices on impaired driving offenders for the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA). Mr. Fell formerly worked at NHTSA from 1969 to 1999 and has 43 years of traffic safety and alcohol research experience. He has both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Human Factors Engineering from the State University of New York at Buffalo.
Ask the experts what can be done in your community to prevent underage drinking and make your community safer.
