U.S. Chamber Sponsors Family Day

 

What are you doing for dinner on September 24? Hopefully, you will be spending it with your family in celebration of Family Day-A Day to Eat Dinner With Your Children™.

 

The U.S. Chamber is once again teaming up with The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University to sponsor Family Day, a national initiative that promotes regular family activities and family dinners as simple and effective ways to improve parent-child communication and reduce the risk of adolescent smoking, drinking, and illegal drug use.

 

CASA's research has consistently found that children who regularly eat dinner with their families are less likely to smoke, drink, or use drugs than children who don't regularly dine with their parents.

 

In its latest report, The Importance of Family Dinners III, CASA finds that, compared with teens who have five or more family dinners per week, teens who have two or fewer family dinners per week are more than twice as likely to have tried cigarettes; one and a half times likelier to have tried alcohol; and twice as likely to have tried marijuana.

 

"Family dinners and the communication that occurs over the course of a meal are critical in building a relationship with your children and in understanding the world in which they live," says Joseph A. Califano Jr., the  chairman and president of CASA and former U.S. Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare.

 

The Chamber is joining more than 30 corporate sponsors and approximately 200 nonprofit organizations to encourage its members and their employees to observe Family Day.

 

For more information, go to www.casafamilyday.org/.