Kevin Winters wants Scranton to be the model across the country and the world for a community-wide public health approach to problem gambling that starts with educating young people.
“We've got to focus. Treatment and recovery are important conversations, but upstream early intervention, education, prevention are just as important,” he said. “And that's where we're lacking at the moment.”
Winters, the founder and CEO of Almond Digital Health, discussed his company’s mobile app and its mission at Scranton City Hall on Tuesday. He sat with representatives from the city’s recovery community, Geisinger, Commonwealth Health, The Wright Center, Scranton School District, United Neighborhood Centers of Northeastern Pennsylvania, Friendship House, WVIA and more.
Scranton Mayor Paige Cognetti pointed to the packed governor’s room at City Hall.
“I think we know that it's an issue not just in Scranton but throughout the entire nation,” she said. “It’s really smart to start early, start looking at K-12, and even before that, parents, pediatricians, helping to spread awareness of what some of these early signs of addiction are, making sure that we have, importantly, resources for those that do need help.”
Winters has worked in public health for more than 20 years.
The company is called Almond because the part of the brain responsible for risk and addiction is the amygdala, he said.
“Amygdala, in Latin, is almond,” he said.
Almond is not anti-gambling. Winters’ company aims to help people to develop healthy gambling habits and that includes gambling within their means or taking a break if the betting starts to impact their life.
Winters said they received funding from the state to roll out their program to colleges, universities, employers, health plans and for individuals seeking help in specialized clinical settings.
“This is also about how do we have awareness campaigns, general messaging on developing healthy gambling habits, education, upstream early intervention, prevention, treatment, recovery-that whole kind of public health ecosystem,” he said.
Targeting youth
Winters said 1 to 2% of people in the United States have been diagnosed with problem gambling, and that in most situations people only get help when they’re at the end of their addiction.
He also said 70 to 80% of funding for problem gambling is directed to services for adults.
However, research estimates that over 20% of students in Pennsylvania have gambled at some point in their lives, according to the 2023 PA Youth Survey of 6,8,10 and 12th grade students.
Scranton School District Superintendent Erin Keating was part of the conversation.
She said from a school district perspective, they want to teach their students about digital health and safety, and that includes online gambling.
Keating said online algorithms are built to hit the brain’s reward system, including gambling.
“But that's a piece to digital health and safety that we need to teach because we can't ignore the fact that our kids are digital citizens,” she said.
Keating said school district staff need professional development on digital health and safety to help pass those lessons onto students.
Almond has developed a curriculum for K-12 students, Winters said.
Legal gambling
Winters said the prevalence of problem gambling really ramped up after the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a 1992 federal law prohibiting state-approved sports gambling. Online betting became legal on a state-by-state basis.
But months before, then-Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf signed Act 42 on Oct. 30, 2017, that legalized online gambling, expanded casino gambling, and permitted video gambling terminals at truck stops and airports.
Online sports betting in Pennsylvania followed both decisions in May 2019.
Winters said ages 13 to 18 is a critical intervention point for people. And those in that age group don’t often think of online sports betting in the traditional gambling sense, since many bets are now placed online instead of at a smoky casino or a horse race.
Bets can be placed in real time on foul shots during a basketball game or pitches thrown during a baseball game.
FINDING HELP IN PENNSYLVANIA
● 24-hour helpline: 1-800-GAMBLER or pacouncil.com
● Self-exclusion program: pgcb.pa.gov/SelfExclusion
But Winters also said that early invention needs to happen at all different levels for all different age groups, including at primary care offices, pediatricians and through other marketing tools.
Kyle Popish founded WholePath Wellness, which offers addictions counseling including for problem gambling. He said he treats people ages 14 to 70.
He was excited by Tuesday's conversation. He offered one solution: establishing more group support meetings in the area.
Right now, there’s only two Gamblers Anonymous meetings available — one on Sundays from 5:30 to 7 p.m. at St. Matthew’s United Evangelical Church in Scranton, and a second on Wednesdays at 7 p.m. at the Waverly United Methodist Church, 105 Church St., Waverly.
Scranton fits
After the roundtable, Cognetti said the city is excited to have started a relationship with Almond and the groups who turned out for the meeting.
She said the city is the right size for the type of pilot program that Almond is offering.
“We are small enough that you can work a problem with a group of collaborators. You can get in a room with you know two three dozen folks and have a manageable group of people leading something. It's also big enough, you know, a city of 80,000 people, a region of 600,000 people … it really makes an impact,” she said.
