How College Campuses Can Support Students in Recovery
Public Health On Call
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health
4.6 • 644 Ratings
🗓️ 4 June 2026
⏱️ 17 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
About this episode:
Recovering from a substance use disorder while in college is a unique challenge mired by stigma and social pressures to drink or use drugs. But collegiate interventions for young adults can change the trajectory and even save lives. In this episode: Noel Vest, an addiction recovery researcher, explains what makes a good collegiate recovery program and why now is a great time for higher education institutions to expand support for students.
Guest:
Noel Vest, PhD, is an assistant professor of community health sciences at the Boston University School of Public Health.
Host:
Lindsay Smith Rogers, MA, is the producer of the Public Health On Call podcast, an editor for Expert Insights, and the director of content strategy for the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Show links and related content:
-
Drug recovery is now US national policy. Campuses need to step up—Times Higher Education
-
ADDRESSING ADDICTION THROUGH THE GREAT AMERICAN RECOVERY INITIATIVE—The White House
-
What is SAFE Campuses?—SAFE Project
Transcript information:
Looking for episode transcripts? Open our podcast on the Apple Podcasts app (desktop or mobile) or the Spotify mobile app to access an auto-generated transcript of any episode. Closed captioning is also available for every episode on our YouTube channel.
Contact us:
Have a question about something you heard? Looking for a transcript? Want to suggest a topic or guest? Contact us via email or visit our website.
Follow us:
-
Here's our RSS feed
Note: These podcasts are a conversation between the participants, and do not represent the position of Johns Hopkins University.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Welcome to Public Health On Call, a podcast from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, |
| 0:05.9 | where we bring evidence, experience, and perspective to make sense of today's leading health challenges. |
| 0:16.3 | If you have questions or ideas for us, please send an email to public health question at jh. |
| 0:21.6 | Jh.edu. |
| 0:23.6 | That's public health question at jh.u. |
| 0:26.6 | For future podcast episodes. |
| 0:29.6 | It's Lindsay Smith Rogers. |
| 0:32.6 | Today, addiction and recovery on college campuses. |
| 0:35.6 | I speak with Noel Vest, an assistant professor at the |
| 0:38.9 | Boston University School Public Health. We talk about the role universities can play in helping |
| 0:44.3 | students access recovery support and how recent shifts in stigma and greater understanding of |
| 0:50.1 | recovery as part of a continuum of care and addiction are creating more opportunities for |
| 0:55.3 | programs like these. Let's listen. Noel Vest, thanks so much for joining us on public health |
| 1:00.5 | on call. How are you doing today? I'm doing wonderful. Good. Well, we're glad to have you. Today, |
| 1:04.4 | we're going to be talking about addiction and recovery on college campuses. But to start us off, |
| 1:09.3 | would you please introduce us and tell us a bit about you and your |
| 1:11.9 | work? Sure. So my name is Dr. Nolvest. I'm an assistant professor at the School of Public Health |
| 1:18.6 | in Boston University and the Department of Community Health Sciences. Tell us about your |
| 1:23.8 | academic career. Yeah, it's very convoluted and and I'll try and keep it down to 30-second |
| 1:29.7 | version. But my, you know, my life was ravaged by addiction, both myself and people around me. |
| 1:36.3 | Up until 2009, I decided that I wanted to go back to school. And so I did, and I thought I wanted |
| 1:42.0 | to be a drug and alcohol counselor. I realized very quickly that I did not want to be a drug and alcohol counselor. |
... |
Transcript will be available on the free plan in 25 days. Upgrade to see the full transcript now.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.