Completion of the Interdisciplinary Certificate in Substance Abuse Education and Prevention requires the successful completion of six courses, for a total of 16 hours of credit.

The courses required for the certificate encompass all of the important elements related to understanding substance abuse, its etiology, correlates, principles of screening, assessment, and referral, biological bases of addiction and treatment, and a variety of other topics, with a special emphasis special populations (e.g., southwestern, rural, families, elderly, HIV/AIDS).

REQUIRED COURSES: Substance Abuse Core Curriculum (13 units)

* EPS 590 Drug and Alcohol Abuse: Prevention and Treatment (3 units)

A graduate seminar offered from the College of Education. This course is offered at NAU and at various distance sites across Arizona. This graduate course provides an overview of the basic concepts of drug and alcohol abuse with empahsis on selection and implementation of treattment and prevention strategies.

* CHP/HP 585 Substance Abuse Prevention for Health Professionals (3 units)

A graduate web course offered by the College of Health Professions and the Department of Health Promotion. This web course is offered only during the summer, but offers a great deal of flexibility in that it can be taken from where ever you have a computer and an internet connection. This interdisciplinary course critically examines prevention strategies for addressing substance abuse in both clinical and community settings, with particular focus on issues of interest in the southwestern U.S.

* PSY 430 Psychophysiology of Drugs and Behavior (3 units)

The sole undergraduate course in the certificate program is offered at NAU each spring at NAU (beamed via television to remote sites every other year). This course is also offered during the summer session. This course provides an introduction to the physiological and synaptic mechanisms by which therapeutic and illicit drugs exert effects on behavior.

* PSY 575 Substance Abuse Screening and Assessment Skills (1 unit)

This is a lab course offered over a 3-day period during the summer session at the beautiful Flagstaff campus. Students will receive training in essential interviewing skills, use of standardized tests, and ethical issues needed to screen, assess, and refer for substance-related problems. Studetns are familiarized with ethical issues in the context of screening, assessment, and referral issues as related to substance abuse.

* Substance Abuse Related Fieldwork Experience (3 units).

Students enroll in the appropriate field placement/fieldwork experience for their disciplines. The fieldwork experience must be taken after the successful completion of the core curriculum and must have clear relevance to substance abuse issues. Prior to taking a fieldwork course, the planned experience must be approved to count toward the certificate. Professional experience outside the academic program may not be used to waive the fieldwork requirement. Fieldwork experiences may vary, click here for more details.

* Approved Elective Courses (need to take one)

* HP 577 Socio-Cultural and Behavioral Aspects of Public Health (3 units)

This graduate course will be offered as a web course beginning Fall 2004. This graduate course provides an overview of social, cultural, and behavioral aspects of public health, including issues and considerations in public health programming.

* HP 532A Applied Aspects of Program Planning, Implementation and Evaluation (4 units).

This graduate course is offered via ITV during the spring semester. Originating from Flagstaff, the course is available in Flagstaff as well as at distance sites. This course is the first of a two-course sequence (the second course is NOT required for the certificate) focusing on theory and processes of planning, implementinig, and evaluating health education and promotion programs.

There may be another course that you would like to petition the committee to count as your elective. This course must gain the approval of the committee before it may count as an elective.

No more than 25% (or 4 units) of the hours required for the certificate program may be transferred from another university, and these units, if approved by the certificate committee, would be counted as a specialty area elective. We would like to see this elective cover program planning and implementation, or course material related to larger issues of maintaining community-based prevention and education programs.