Teenage Fact Sheet

Program Gives Teens Facts About Drunken Driving, Drug Abuse

January 15, 1996

By David Shepardson / The Detroit News

Dr. Paul Taheri, medical director of the University of Michigan Medical Centers' trauma and burn unit, wants to stop drunken driving accidents.

"We see more than 1,000 trauma victims per year, and 80 percent are automobile-accident related," Taheri said. "Of those, 50 percent -- or at least one a day -- is because of a drunk driver."

In an effort to scare teen-agers with a stiff dose of reality and steer them away from alcohol abuse, the University of Michigan is sponsoring a new program to keep adolescents off drugs and alcohol.

"These accidents are absolutely terrible and preventable," Taheri said.

Called Facing Alcohol Challenges Together, the program brings primarily high-risk youths and parents together to see the possible consequences of alcohol and drug abuse.

The medical center plans to serve about 250 young people per year. Many will attend the program as part of a court-ordered alternative sentencing program.

"Most of them will be referred to us by the court, especially for drunk-driving convictions," Taheri said. "If they don't come and bring their parents, they will have to carry out their sentence."

Taheri said the program was important because young drunken drivers show a high rate of reoccurrence.

"Between 50 (percent) to 80 percent of kids who drink and drive get caught again," he said.

More than 30 doctors, nurses and staffers at the hospital volunteer two afternoons every other week for the program.

The six-hour program spread over two half-days combines role playing and frank discussions about drugs and alcohol with a blunt look at the effects of traumatic accidents on the body. The teens also see the costs to the victim's family.

In one role-playing scenario, the youths witness a real nurse telling a mother of an accident victim that her child is dead. They hear a chaplain giving last rites to a pretend victim. They watch as hospital staff go over the bill with the parents.

"These are everyday, actual things that go on in the trauma unit," said Pam Pucci, a registered nurse at the trauma-burn unit and another coordinator of the program.

Parents and young people who attended the first session said they learned a lot.

"It was an unbelievable dose of reality," said Karen Nutting of Brighton, who went through the first run of the university-sponsored program Wednesday night with her daughter, Rachel.

Rachel, 12, said she thought the program could help youths resist peer pressure.

"There are kids in my neighborhood already caught in the drug web," she said. "They already have problems and they're still in middle school."

The program is based on a similar program that began a little over a year ago at Methodist Hospital in Indianapolis, Taheri said. University researchers will do follow-up interviews with the participants for several years to determine the program's effectiveness.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

Tags: Studies |  Underage drinking