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ELKINS -- An international expert on substance abuse prevention will speak at a special event Monday.
A West Virginia University researcher will address the Elkins Opioid Task Force and members of the public at 6 p.m. at the Phil Gainer Community Center.
Alfgeir L. Kristjansson, PhD, MSc., a WVU professor and researcher, will present his findings on preventing substance abuse among young people.
The event is designed to provide information and ideas for getting the community involved in the prevention and treatment of youth opioid abuse.
Kristjansson is a Professor of Public Health at the WVU School of Public Health, Center PI and Co-Director for the West Virginia Prevention Research Center (WVPRC), a senior researcher with Planet Youth, and adjunct faculty at Reykjavik University in Iceland.
He earned his PhD in Social Medicine from the Karolinska Institute in Sweden in 2010 and was a post-doctoral fellow in Health Behavior at Columbia University in New York City between 2010-2012.
Kristjansson has published widely on the Icelandic Prevention Model and substance use prevention, as well as more generally on adolescent behavioral development and the well-being of children, youth and families. Currently, he is the Principal Investigator (PI) of several U.S.-based federally funded studies, including the Young Mountaineer Health Study in WV funded by NIAAA, and the Integrated Community Engagement (ICE) Collaborative funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) via the WVPRC.
He has published more than 120 peer-reviewed manuscripts in scholarly journals within public health, health education, preventive medicine and multidisciplinary journals focused on adolescents.