A new Annenberg Public Policy Center institute will draw together scholars across campus engaged in research on reducing risky behavior in teens.

The new Institute for Adolescent Risk Communication is backed by a $25 million endowment from the Annenberg Foundation, President Judith Rodin announced Dec. 13.

The new center’s goal is to help communicators devise strategies for reducing high-risk behavior such as drug use, smoking, suicidal behavior and transmission of sexual diseases.

“Now that the campus has been able to attract very good researchers doing work in these fields, we felt it was time to integrate them so that efforts to reduce one risk do not end up increasing another,” said APPC Director Kathleen Hall Jamieson, dean of the Annenberg School for Communication.

The foundation also donated $2.5 million to endow the Walter and Leonore Annenberg Chair for the director of the Annenberg Public Policy Center.