NEWBURYPORT — Attorney General Maura Healey is advocating joint action to ensure substance use prevention education is available for all Massachusetts public school students as she launched a tour of local seventh- and eighth-grade classrooms. Healey’s first stop Wednesday was at Rupert A. Nock Middle School in Newburyport.

Alongside Mayor Donna Holaday, Nock principal Lisa Furlong and other school officials, Healey presented Project Here, a $2 million public and private initiative tackling the unmet need in the state’s battle against the opioid crisis, to Jay Murphy’s eighth-grade health and wellness class.

In May 2017, Healey and the GE Foundation formed Project Here in collaboration with Health Resources in Action, Epicenter Experience and The Herren Project. The program provides resources to middle school students through classroom and mobile learning experiences, said Healey, who noted the importance of educating students about the risks and consequences of using or experimenting with drugs.

“We care about your safety and your well-being,” Healey told eighth-graders. “Something we know right now is that there are a lot of people in this state who are sick, a lot of people who are suffering. Many families have lost members of their family due to substance abuse and a lot of this is preventable.”

The initiative focuses on promoting social and emotional learning in addition to healthy decision-making using three components — an educational toolkit, a digital app, and a grant program for evidence-based curriculum. More than 200 public schools are registered to provide teacher guides, lesson plans, educational resources, video content and outreach materials to students, state officials said.

Murphy’s eighth-grade students gathered into six groups of five, each with an adult participant, to discuss topics that included alcohol use, the differences between recreational and medicinal marijuana, vaping and e-cigarettes, and the peer pressure that comes with drug and alcohol use.

School officials have been focusing on the social and emotional well-being of students across the district in recent months. Murphy told students that substance use is not the way for youths to cope with trauma.

“We have to talk about it,” Murphy said. “It’s about having role models in life.”

Healey noted the importance of adults working with youths rather than talking at them about drugs and alcohol.

“I really appreciate the commitment of the mayor, the superintendent, the principal,” Healey said. “We’re very lucky to have such supportive adults working with kids.”

The toolkit also gives students the opportunity to connect with a support network staffed by licensed professionals at The Herren Project, Healey noted.

Schools will have access to a mobile app, which will be available in the fall, that serves as a tool for students to learn about substance use and practice positive decision-making, according to the Project Here website.

Murphy and Healey agreed that teenagers at the middle school level are the ideal target for substance use, however, it is also the age group to provide prevention habits. Murphy added that in his health and wellness class, he begins teaching students about nicotine in the fourth grade and gradually moves on to alcohol, marijuana and harder drugs as the students progress.

“We’re trying to attack (the opioid crisis) from many fronts but I fundamentally believe the best way to stop addiction is to stop it before it sets in and that’s why we need to get education materials out and when you get to high school, it’s too late,” Healey said. “You need to target kids in middle school …t here are some things they know, there are some thing they don’t know.”

Ninety percent of all adults struggling with addiction started using when they were under the age of 18, and 50 percent were under the age of 15, according to Project Here. Studies have shown that effective substance use education and prevention programming can decrease the risk of substance use among teens, the organization said in a release.

“Newburyport is no different than any other community in the state because this is a crisis that crosses socioeconomic levels,” Healey said. “It hits our rural, urban and suburban communities.”

The attorney general’s office has disbursed $700,000 in settlement funding directly to school districts, nonprofits and community organizations to fund prevention programming through its Youth Opioid Prevention Grant Program, according to a press release from Healey’s office.

In addition, a new program from Project Here will fund evidence-based substance use prevention curriculum in public middle schools across the state. The grant, Healey noted, will provide funding to implement one of three evidence-based prevention curriculum — Botvin LifeSkills Training, Michigan Model for Health or Positive Action. Full proposals must be submitted online at www.here.world/grant by 4 p.m. on June 15.

For information on Project Here, visit https://www.mass.gov/project-here-substance-use-prevention-education.

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