Public Health Professor Dessa Bergen-Cico (left), shown here speaking at the International Drug Policy Academy (IDPA) in Strasbourg, France, this past June, is the coordinator of the addiction studies program at the Falk College and co-developed the IDPA’s curriculum.
Needing one more class or an independent study to complete a master’s degree in public health, Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics student Emily Graham turned to Public Health Professor Dessa Bergen-Cico for advice and Bergen-Cico offered the opportunity of a lifetime–a four-day immersion program in Strasbourg, France, in early June to participate in the International Drug Policy Academy (IDPA).
Bergen-Cico has been working with the Council of Europe’s Pompidou Group and International Cooperation Group on Drugs and Addictions since 2010, and she co-developed the IDPA with the Pompidou Group’s leadership team in 2018. The IDPA, an intensive professional development program divided into three modules over a period of one year, is designed for professionals from all over the world who work as managers or senior team members in the areas of drug policies and addictions.
Emily Graham
For Graham, the IDPA showed her the value of cross-collaboration and understanding that there is more than one solution to substance abuse issues.
“The biggest takeaway for me was asking for help,” says Graham. “Sometimes when you get into executive positions, you feel like you need to figure it all out. But it’s OK to reach out and say, ‘Hey, what did you guys do and what were your results and how can we improve from that?’”
The IDPA is one of several unique opportunities for Syracuse University students to work with faculty and obtain global experience that exposes them to new ways of thinking about substance abuse and addictive behaviors. These opportunities are available to students who participate in the Falk College’s addiction studies program that Bergen-Cico coordinates, and students like Graham who are involved with addiction studies in other ways.
As an undergraduate student and Barnes Center at The Arch peer educator, Emily Graham was asked to oversee the Orange Recovery program for students who are in recovery from substance use disorder or sober curious. Soon after she received a bachelor’s degree in public health in 2022, she became assistant director for the Lerner Center for Public Health Promotion and Population Health in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs. The Lerner Center’s mission is to improve population and community health through research, education, outreach and health promotion programming focused on the social, spatial and structural determinants of physical, mental and behavioral health and health disparities.
A U.S. Navy veteran, Graham is particularly interested in health and wellness for military veterans, who have a high rate of substance use disorder. She says the IDPA gave her a global perspective on prevention that she couldn’t get anywhere else.
“Being in the U.S., you can get single-minded about how we’re handling it here,” says Graham, who recently received the Maxwell Staff Rising Star award. “But you’re seeing that drugs affect everybody, and we’re all trying to find a common solution and work toward a common goal.”
When he was the center director of Syracuse University Strasbourg, Raymond Bach created an internship program for Syracuse Abroad students through his collaborations with Pompidou Group Deputy Executive Secretary Thomas Kattau. The Pompidou Group consists of representatives from countries throughout the world who “provide knowledge, support and solutions for effective, evidence-based drug policies, which fully respect human rights,” according to its website.
Dessa Bergen-Cico (left), Emily Graham (center) and McKenna Moonan, a master’s student of public diplomacy and global communications, stand in the European Court of Human Rights in Strasbourg. Moonan was working as an intern for the Pompidou Group.
In 2010, Pompidou Group leaders expressed an interest in having U.S.-based experts in addiction and drug policy work with them on executive training programs for European-based drug policy administrators and Bach connected them to Bergen-Cico, who had emerged as an innovative expert on substance abuse and addiction. By 2011, Bergen-Cico started providing opportunities for students from the addiction studies program to participate in the Pompidou Group’s executive training programs and their first collaboration was held in Budapest, Hungary.
“Sasha Almasian Menkes ’13 was a public health and addiction studies student who participated much in the same way that Emily did this year,” Bergen-Cico says. “For the participants in 2011, the course was focused on emerging democracies in a lot of the former Soviet Union countries that were establishing independence and trying to find public health-based approaches to dealing with substance use and addiction.”
Over the years, the executive training expanded into the IDPA, which has evolved into a three-module program to accommodate increasingly complex topics and the growing number of attendees from all over the world. This year, Module 1 was held at Syracuse University Florence, Italy, in March; Module 2 was held in Strasbourg in June; and Module 3 will be held in Valletta, Malta, in October.
“Drug policies have changed dramatically, certainly in the U.S and in the past 15 years globally,” Bergen-Cico says. “For example, we went from heavy prison sentences for possession of cannabis to it being recreationally legal or decriminalized for anybody 21 and over in the majority of U.S. states and many countries are following a similar path. That just gives you an idea of the landscape and the people who are working in this area need a lot of training to be brought up to speed.”
Please visit the Falk College website for the full story on the IDPA and other opportunities for students interested in addiction studies.
If you’re interested in learning more about the addiction studies program at the Falk College, visit the addiction studies webpage or contact Bergen-Cico at dkbergen@syr.edu.
