Fernando Salazar is a Principal Professor at the Cayetano Heredia Peruvian University. Fernando started his involvement with substance use and people’s well-being when he directed two national studies for DEVIDA, the National Secretariat of Peru that deals with drug demand reduction.
His concern with the clear link between substance use and the deterioration of society and people’s well-being led him to look for means to intervene in this problem. Fernando considers a milestone in his career the landing of a multi-component, multilevel school prevention intervention that showed its effectiveness in substance prevention. This was reached thanks to having conducted the project to evaluate the Effects of the Universal Prevention Curriculum for Schools on Substance Use Among Peruvian Adolescents in the last 5 years.
He is happy now because he found a way to deal with substance use initiation and progression in alliance with science and other prevention advocates like him.