About CHI: History

In the Fall of 1997, Communication faculty members Linda Lederman and Lea Stewart worked with Lisa Laitman, Fern Goodhart, and Richard Powell, health educators and substance abuse counselors from the Rutgers 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.

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

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).