DLElliot

I am a Professor at the medical school in Portland, Oregon (Oregon Health & Science University [OHSU]). For fifteen years, my colleagues and I have been developing, studying and now disseminating evidence-based drug use prevention and health promotion programs for high school athletes. As teenagers enter high school, classroom health classes no longer are effective. Kids are more influenced by their friends than who sits next to them in health class. In addition, because drug use issues differ for girls and boys, the traditional health class format becomes ineffective.

Sport teams are natural vehicles for bonded, same sex athletes and an influential coach to promote healthy behaviors. Our programs were developed with National Institutes of Health funding, and both ATLAS (for boys [atlasprogram.com]) and ATHENA (for girls [athenaprogram.com]) are proven to reduce drug use, drinking and driving, disordered eating and other harmful behaviors, while improving nutrition and healthy decision making. The effects are long lasting, and one two three years after graduation, girls in ATHENA had half the tobacco, alcohol and marijuana use of girls on the non-ATHENA control teams. Our results have been published in peer-reviewed journals, and our programs are on the US government’s website for evidence-based programs (http://www.nrepp.samhsa.gov/).

The programs are easily integrated into a sport team's usual practice activities. While from the high school athletes' perspective, ATHENA and ATLAS are all about being better athletes, the head fake is that the same life skills that lead to successful athletes and teams also lead to being healthy adults. Our objective now is to help recapture the healthy mission of sports and have the locker room be recognized as one of the most important classrooms in high schools. We are working to bring the ATHENA program to the more than 3 million US young women in high school sports, cheer and dance & drill.

In the 60's, when I was in high school, few girls played sports. Girls in my family, who are now young adults, played high school sports, while I watched from the sidelines. I don't much care for spectator sports, unless I know the players. When I do know the players, I love to watch the emotional lows, highs and pure joy of the physicality and camaraderie of sports.
We want to see all young women in high school participate in some sort of school-sponsored physical activity. We want ATHENA integrated into females' high school activity programs. We want all young women to benefit from the program's benefits, including improved ability to control their mood, insight into media manipulation and social stereotyping, better nutrition and training habits, enhanced self esteem and reduced use of disordered eating practices, diet pills, tobacco, alcohol and marijuana. We want to recapture the healthy mission of sports.

I am a Professor of Medicine in the Division of Health Promotion & Sports Medicine at Oregon Health & Science University in Portland, Oregon. I was principal investigator for the National Institute on Drug Abuse ATHENA (Athletes Targeting Healthy Exercise & Nutrition Alternatives) study of a health promotion program for young women high school athletes. Partnering with the NFL’s Youth Football Fund, NFL Players Association and 15 NFL teams, including the 49er’s, ATHENA and its brother program ATLAS, are being implemented by more than 30,000 young athletes nationwide. I have been a doping control officer for the U.S. Anti-doping Association and have testified before Congress on women and drug use in sports. I also work with fire fighters and law enforcement agencies studying worksite wellness programs to improve the health of those who protect us. I have more than 200 publications, maintain a primary care internal medicine practice and supervise trainees in the clinic and hospital wards. I am a fellow of the American College of Sports Medicine and the American College of Physicians.