"Powered By Me!" Teams Up With Goucher College Athletes To Create Peer Program - Educating Baltimore Youth About Steroids & Other Performance Enhancing Substances

(Towson, MD)  St. Joseph Medical Center's anti-steroid education program "POWERED BY ME!" is teaming up with student athletes from Goucher College to form the nation’s first Anti-Steroid College Peer Education Program.  

Under the program, Goucher student athletes will go to Baltimore-area high schools to spread the word about the dangers of anabolic steroids and other performance enhancing substances. "Hearing this important information from a peer is much more effective than hearing it from an adult," says Mike Gimbel, director of Powered by ME!  "We saw how effective the Students Against Drunk Driving Program (SADD) was in reducing the number of alcohol-related deaths among teens, and we are looking for the same results with this peer education program."
 
The program will begin this Wednesday evening, Feburary 17, 2010, at 9 p.m. with a special in- service training session in the Sports and Recreation Center Conference Room at Goucher College.    Student athletes will develop a program to be taken into high schools, beginning with a presentation at the Powered by ME! annual high school student athletes’ conference on April 29, 2010 at the Crowne Plaza in Timonium.  The college peer program has already been endorsed by Ron Belinko, director of Athletics for the Baltimore County Public Schools.
 
The need for this program was reinforced this past week by a number of incidents: Baltimore native and professional basketball player Juan Dixon tested positive for steroids while playing in Greece; more than 30 Winter Olympic athletes in Vancouver failed drug tests; Brian Parker, a member of the Baltimore Orioles minor league team in Frederick tested positive and was suspended for 50 games; and the French government issues a warrant for the arrest of Floyd Landis who won the 2007 Tour de France, but was stripped of his title after testing positive for steroids.  "We know that every athlete, regardless of their age or sport wants to become bigger, stronger and faster,” says Gimbel. "Our goal is help athletes achieve these results without using anabolic steroids or other performance enhancing substances."

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St. Joseph Medical Center is a 345-bed nonprofit, regional medical center in Towson, Md., and a member of Catholic Health Initiatives. Founded in 1864 by the Sisters of St. Francis, St. Joseph is the only NCI Community Cancer Program in Maryland, is a nationally ranked Top 100 Heart Hospital, and has been recognized by U.S. News & World Report as one of America’s best orthopaedic facilities.  For more information about St. Joseph Medical Center, visit www.stjosephtowson.com.