Prevention of alcohol use and abuse among adolescents and youngsters in Europe

Adolescence is a vulnerable time that might entail the beginning of harmful health behaviours. From a public health perspective, the negative consequences and harm related outcomes of alcohol use have been well described, especially in adolescents and young people. In this sense, Prevention Science is a multidisciplinary scientific field that offers a framework to prevent or delay these risk behaviours. Beginning with a prevention taxonomy aimed to understand substance misuse prevention, this symposium will then address some questions related to alcohol misuse prevention in adolescents and youngsters: Are attitudes related to alcohol use? What is the pattern of alcohol use in public settings? And what is the incidence of alcohol use in emergency room services? The first communication, ‘Environmental, Developmental and Informational Interventions: A Novel Prevention Taxonomy to Better Organise and Understand Substance Misuse Prevention’ will highlight the importance of having a strong organising classification system to understand preventive initiatives. Secondly, ‘Adolescent and young attitude towards alcohol use and drunkenness’, will examine the relationship between attitudes towards alcohol related behaviours and young and adolescent drinking and binge drinking patterns. Then, in ‘Young alcohol use in public settings’ we present objective data of alcohol use and perception of drunkenness when adolescents and young people consume alcohol in public settings, and the role that social environment plays in this relationship. Finally, the last communication, ‘Adolescent and young alcohol use impact in emergency services’, describes prevalence of alcohol use and multidrug poisoning during the last ten years, monitored at the University Hospital in Palma de Mallorca, mainly related to the recreational nightlife context. This symposium will offer a complete perspective on prevention science, highlighting the role that the socialization context plays on adolescent and young people’s alcohol use as well as the impact that it has on emergency services.

Elena Gervilla received her PhD in Psychology from the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain). The title of the dissertation was “Application of data mining processes to deviant behaviour”. She also finished an MSc in Psychopathology and a postgraduate degree in Statistics (both at the Autonomous University of Barcelona) and an MSc in Prevention and Rehabilitation of Addictive Behaviors (at the Catholic University of Valencia, Spain). Dr Gervilla currently works at the University of the Balearic Islands, Spain, where she is an Associate Professor at the Area of Methodology of Behavioural Sciences and the Secretary of the Department of Psychology. Besides, she contributes as a course instructor with the Open University of Catalonia. Her previous experience includes teaching and research tasks in the area of Methodology and Statistics at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. The research she develops focuses on adolescent and youth drug use prevention. She is especially interested on the improvement of the quality of the data collection as well as the implementation of data mining techniques that allow to model substance use behaviour in the social natural environment. She is especially interested in the implementation of data mining techniques to improve our knowledge on the risk and protective factors of drug use in youth, as well as the transcultural use of valid and reliable measurements in this field. In addition, Elena is a researcher in the Research Group in Data Analysis (GRAD) at the University of the Balearic Islands (UIB), collaborates closely with the European Institute of Studies on Prevention (IREFREA, Spain) in the development and implementation of research projects and is an active early-career member of the European Society for Prevention Research (EUSPR).