Transforming Drug Education in NYC Classrooms

By training and mobilizing doctors (and future doctors) as PEP Instructors, we are working to transform the model of drug education in the United States. PEP Instructors come from NYU Langone Health, Health + Hospitals Bellevue, and a growing number of partner institutions to reach classrooms and auditoriums in NYC and beyond.

Since 2015, we have achieved the following:

• engaged over 500 schools and community programs throughout all five boroughs
• trained more than 500 medical students, residents, fellows, faculty, physician assistants, and nurses as PEP instructors
• delivered over 600 PEP Talks
• educated over 17,000 learners
• collaborated with:
  • the New York City Department of Education (DOE) Office of School Safety and Youth Development
  • the NYC Poison Control Center, part of the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH)
  • Family Health Centers at NYU Langone
  • Rutgers Robert Wood Johnson (RWJ) Department of Emergency Medicine
  • New York Presbyterian (NYP)-Columbia Department of Pediatrics

Our PEP Talks and social media outreach have reached thousands of teens and young adults in NYC, both in the classroom and online. Our work helps change attitudes and promote behaviors that prevent alcohol- and drug-related illnesses, injuries, and deaths.

PEP Talks Testimonials

“[PEP Talks] makes me see things in a way I haven’t seen them. Now I look at drugs like, ‘This could actually happen to me.’”—Brian Duran, high school student

“Talking with a doctor about real life, I watch my students get more engaged than in many of their other classes.”—Jackson Schaefer, high school teacher

“I left that session feeling much more optimistic about drug education in the U.S. We may have done it wrong in the past, but to me, it seems now that there are certainly ways of doing it right.”—Mark Kryger, NYU Grossman School of Medicine student