Substance abuse is America’s number one health problem. The economic impact is staggering; the human toll is incalculable. Among adolescents, substance abuse is associated with the three leading causes of death – motor vehicle crashes and other accidental injuries, homicides and suicides. It is hard to believe that it has been nine and a half years since our son, Ryan, at age nineteen, died at the Quincy Quarries in an accident related to alcohol. On this tenth anniversary of his death, we felt that it would be fitting to remember him with a golf tournament to benefit The Center for Adolescent Substance Abuse Research (CeASAR) and more specifically, the Adolescent Substance Abuse Program (ASAP) at Children’s Hospital Boston.
ASAP is a full service outpatient program that provides comprehensive diagnostic evaluations, brief interventions, group and individual therapy, pharmacotherapies, and follow-up and referral for substance-using adolescents and their families. Founded in 2000, the ASAP clinic was formed in order to respond to the hundreds of requests for assistance that were received from parents and primary care clinicians. Since its inception, ASAP has served hundreds of families in the New England area with well over 120 visits per year. ASAP is the only program of its kind located at a Children’s Hospital in the United States. However, ASAP is not self-supporting and needs help from friends like you so that no family is ever turned away in their hour of need.
Your support will help us not only reach this goal but will allow thousands of adolescents and their parents to receive the attention and care that they need. On behalf of those teens and families whose lives will be touched by your generosity, thank you for your support.
Dick and Karen Whitney
Please visit the Center’s website at www.ceasar-boston.org