Preventing Harmful Substance Use: The Evidence Base for Policy and Practice

Wendy Loxley is an Associate Professor at the National Drug Research Institute, at Curtin University of Technology in Perth, Western Australia, where she has been employed for fifteen years. Much of her early research career was concerned with addressing the risk of blood-borne viruses to Australian injecting drug users, and she has been involved in a number of large quantitative and smaller qualitative studies exploring this issue. Other research experiences include monitoring illicit drug use among police detainees, the evaluation of community-based approaches to drug law enforcement, and the use of testing and vaccination to prevent hepatitis C and other blood-borne viruses among injectors. She was selected by the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing to lead the evaluation of the Community Partnerships Initiative which was aimed at the development of community-based approaches to primary prevention of illicit drug use in young people. More recently, she was the first principal investigator on a commission for the Australian Government Department of Health and Ageing which undertook a major literature review of the evidence relating to the prevention of drug use, risk and harm in Australia, She is the first author of the two volumes-Monograph and Summary-which have recently been published from this work.

Tim Stockwell is currently Director of the Centre for Addictions Research of BC, Canada, and, until mid-2004, was Director of Australia's National Drug Research Institute based at Curtin University in Western Australia. He recently co-edited the critically acclaimed Wiley book International Handbook of Alcohol Dependence and Problems with Nick Heather and Tim Peters. he has published widely in the field of addiction studies and has particular expertise in the areas of alcohol and other drug epidemiology and prevention policy. He was Regional Editor for Australasia of the International Journal Addiction for six years. He was until recently a member of Australia's National Expert Advisory Committee on Alcohol, a Director of Australia's Alcohol Education and Rehabilitation Foundation and member of the World Health Organization's Alcohol Policy and Strategy Advisory Committee. He obtained his first degree in Psychology and Philosophy at Oxford University, a Master's degree in Clinical Psychology from the University of Surrey and a doctorate at the Institute of Psychiatry, the University of London.

John Winston Toumbourou is Associate Professor at the Department of Pediatrics, University of Melbourne, and a Senior Researcher at the Center for Adolescent Health, within the Murdoch Children's Research Institute. John is a founding member and the past Chair of the College of Health Psychologists within the Australian Psychological Society. He is a Principal Investigator on a number of studies investigating healthy youth development, including the Australian Temperament Project (investigating the role of childhood temperament and behaviour in the prediction of adolescent substance use, delinquency and depression), and the International Youth Development study (a collaborative longitudinal study with the Social Development Research Group at the University of Washington). John has been involved in the development of a number of youth health promotion programmes including the Chronic Illness Peer Support Program ( Victorian Public Health Award 1999), the Behaviour Exchange Systems Training Program (targeting families experiencing youth substance abuse), Program for Parents (a national youth suicide prevention programme demonstrating success in reducing early youth delinquency and substance use) and Communities that Care (a community mobilisation programme targeting crime prevention and substance abuse Prevention). John has been prominent in developing literat5ure reviews and policy recommendations relevant to developmental prevention through the Victorian Premier's Drug Prevention Council Drug Info Clearinghouse and within the consortium that produced the recent Prevention Monograph summarising the evidence base for the Australian Commonwealth Government's Prevention Agenda.