The redesigned Join Together website (http://www.jointogether.org) launched with the Get Serious campaign, a petition drive calling on political leaders to learn about and support proven strategies to prevent underage drinking.

"Join Together's new website maintains all the important, objective news and information services that people throughout the country rely on every day," said David Rosenbloom, director of Join Together. "But good information is not enough. We know there are policies, prevention programs and treatments that will save lives. The new Join Together website provides leaders in every state with tools to make them happen."

Added Rosenbloom: "The Institute of Medicine provided evidence-based recommendations on underage drinking that will save kids lives if they are implemented. Many elected officials paid lip service to the report, but did nothing. We started the 'Get Serious' campaign to provide parents, kids and professionals around the country a way to tell their leaders that they want them to actually do something about alcohol marketing, prices and policies so fewer kids die from alcohol every year."

Launched in 1993, Join Together Online pioneered use of the Internet to provide news, information, and technical assistance to the addiction treatment, prevention, and recovery communities. Today, Join Together serves a community of about 100,000 users, and the website receives in excess of three million page views annually.

WEB REDESIGN ADDS NEW CONTENT, SHARPENS FOCUS, IMPROVES USABILITY

The major new redesign of the Join Together website retains the key features that have made the site the Internet's primary source for alcohol and other drug news, while sharpening focus on key policy issues and making the site more user-friendly than ever.

Improvements to the Join Together website include:

- More research reports and community stories, in addition to the independent, unbiased news reporting that readers have come to depend on. The news section of the site also has been reorganized and enhanced based on user feedback.

- Better and faster search tools, with new options to refine your search of more than 7,000 archived news stories and thousands of other documents.

- A new Key Issues section that outlines 10 evidence-based policies that will save lives and improve prevention and treatment outcomes. Users can see how their state measures up on critical policies, find groups in their state working on these issues, and identify the key public officials responsible.

- 'What Can I Do?' advice on getting actively involved in policy changes, including success stories from other communities.

- A state action center to help users promote and mobilize change. Users can submit their own news and action alerts for publication and use the In Your State section to build linkages with other local advocates.

- Improved user personalization, including detailed profiles and preferences for receiving free Join Together news and funding newsletters and other information.

"There's a huge amount of content on the site, but we put a lot of effort into making it accessible and practical," said Eric Helmuth, director of Internet strategy and communications for Join Together. "You can search the archive from any page and quickly narrow the results by date, topic or type of article."

"But even better, if you're reading a page about, for example, drunk-driving laws, you're likely to see sidebars with up-to-date information you can use to learn more and get involved: links to policy reports, local groups you can join, benchmark data for your state, action alerts for pending legislation, and so on," said Helmuth. "This context-driven approach lets our users find the needle in a haystack and makes a big website a lot more valuable."

ABOUT JOIN TOGETHER
Join Together is a program of the Boston University School of Public Health. Since 1991 it has been the nation's leading provider of information, strategic planning assistance, and leadership development for community-based efforts to advance effective alcohol and drug policy, prevention, and treatment. Principal constituents include community leaders, public officials, teachers, prevention and treatment professionals, parents and families.

Join Together is funded by individual donors and foundations, with major support from The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

ABOUT GET SERIOUS
Get Serious (http://www.getserious.org) urges policymakers to address the problem of underage drinking by adopting research-based strategies, including:

- Increasing alcohol prices through taxes, particularly on beer
- Limiting alcohol advertising and marketing targeted at young people
- Implementing a national media campaign that counters alcohol industry messages and uses social marketing to affect attitudes and behavior
- Adopting and enforcing laws to prevent alcohol-related deaths and injuries among young people, such as limited drivers' licenses for young drivers
- Promoting alcohol free events for kids
- Expanding counseling and support for kids, especially those with addicted parents.
 

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