About Us

About Us

WHAT IS CHI?

CHI is a consortium of University faculty, health educators, counselors, residence life staff, enforcement personnel, graduate and undergraduate students who are leaders in creating an understanding of the role of communication and health issues in the college learning experience through:

Research

Education

Prevention

Program Development

Evaluation

WHAT DOES CHI DO?

CHI is dedicated to conducting research on communication and health issues affecting college students and to designing, implementing and evaluating campus and community-based education, intervention and prevention programs. CHI is founded on the belief that communication is an integral part of the relationally-based nature of health issues. The focus of CHI's current work is dangerous drinking in the college environment.

CHI PARTNERSHIP

In Fall 1997, Rutgers faculty members Linda Lederman and Lea Stewart worked with Lisa Laitman, Fern Goodhart, and Richard Powell, health educators and substance abuse counselors from the University Health Services, to create the Communication and Health Issues Partnership for Education and Research which soon became the Center for Communication and Health Issues or CHI. Building on ten years of previous qualitative study of student alcohol use at Rutgers, we began by collecting baseline quantitative data and introducing evidence-based prevention programs based on our continuing data collection efforts.

Rutgers approach to dangerous drinking on campus is based on:

· Education

· Prevention

· Intervention/Treatment

· Enforcement

CHI Members participate in all facets of this comprehensive environmental management approach to reducing dangerous drinking among our students.

At present the CHI partnership includes in addition to its original members, a project co-ordinator, a health professional from Rutgers Newark, a webmaster, a public relations specialist, an advisory board, and more than a dozen graduate and three groups of undergraduate students working on CHI-related projects.

For more information on CHI and our work, see Linda C. Lederman and Lea P. Stewart’s Changing the Culture of College Drinking (Hampton Press, 2005).

FUNDING HISTORY

2005-07 ($425,000)

Let’s Talk About It: Using Experiential Learning and Curriculum Infusion to Reduce College

Drinking

U.S. Department of Education (Stewart, PI & Project Director)

2006-07 ($10,000)

A Personal Feedback Intervention for Incoming College Students

AACU Bringing Theory to Practice Project (supported by the Charles Engelhard Foundation) (Stewart, PI)

2003-08 ($6,000,000)

The Rutgers Transdisciplinary Prevention

Research Center (RTPRC)

National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) Collaborative Project with the Rutgers Center of Alcohol Studies (Stewart, Co-PI)

2000-02 ($400,000)

RU Safe?: Preventing Domestic Violence on the Rutgers Campus

U.S. Department of Justice

Collaborative project with Rutgers Department of Sexual Assault Services and Crime Victim Assistance (Stewart, PI)

2000-01 ($98,000)

Model Program Grant: RU SURE? A Dangerous Drinking Prevention Program

U.S. Department of Education (Stewart, PI)

1998-2004 ($92,000)

Changing the Culture of College Drinking on the Rutgers University Campus

NJ Higher Education Consortium on Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention and Education

(Stewart, PI)

1998-2000 ($250,000)

RU SURE?: Changing the Culture of College Drinking by Correcting Student Misperceptions U.S. Department of Education (R. Pandina, PI; L. Stewart, PI)

The Center for Communication and Health Issues