At a Tuesday roundtable at Scranton City Hall, Almond Digital Health founder Kevin Winters argued that problem gambling should be treated as a public-health issue built around awareness campaigns, education, upstream early intervention, prevention, treatment and recovery. Mayor Paige Cognetti and Scranton School District Superintendent Erin Keating both said the effort should start early, with schools and families.
According to WVIA, Winters said he wants Scranton to become a model “across the country and the world” and stressed that Almond is not anti-gambling. He said the company aims to help people build healthy gambling habits, including gambling within their means and taking a break when betting starts to affect life.
Winters also tied the company’s name to the biology of addiction. Almond Digital Health takes its name from the amygdala, the brain region linked with risk and addiction, and Winters said, “Amygdala, in Latin, is almond.” He said he has worked in public health for more than 20 years and has received state funding to roll out Almond’s program to colleges and universities, employers, health plans and people seeking help in specialized clinical settings.
He said the need for prevention is urgent. Winters said 1% to 2% of people in the United States have been diagnosed with problem gambling, but most people do not seek help until they are at the end of their addiction. He also said 70% to 80% of problem-gambling funding goes to services for adults, even though he sees ages 13 to 18 as a critical intervention point.
He pointed to Pennsylvania data to make that case. The 2023 Pennsylvania Youth Survey is a biennial survey of students in grades 6, 8, 10 and 12. It produced 262,535 valid responses from 1,048 participating schools out of 1,953 eligible schools, after 3,071 invalid surveys were removed.
The WVIA article said research estimates more than 20% of Pennsylvania students have gambled at some point in their lives. Winters also cited studies referenced by the Pennsylvania Gaming Control Board, saying 75% of U.S. college students gambled in the past year, 58% of 18- to 22-year-olds engaged in sports betting and 33.7% of youth under 18 gambled in a one-year period.
He traced the wider shift to the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision striking down a 1992 federal law that barred state-approved sports gambling. Winters said online betting then became legal state by state. In Pennsylvania, he said, Act 42 was signed on 30 October 2017 and legalized online gambling, expanded casino gambling and allowed video gaming terminals at truck stops and airports. Online sports betting in Pennsylvania followed in May 2019.
Keating said the school district wants to teach students about digital health and safety, including online gambling. She said online algorithms are built to hit the brain’s reward system, and that staff need professional development so they can pass those lessons on to students. She also said, “we can’t ignore the fact that our kids are digital citizens.”
Cognetti said it is “really smart to start early, start looking at K-12, and even before that, parents, pediatricians,” and to spread awareness of early signs of addiction while making sure resources are available for people who need help. After the roundtable, she said the city was excited to have started a relationship with Almond and the groups that attended the meeting.
Cognetti also said Scranton is the right size for the work because it is “small enough” for a manageable group of collaborators and “big enough” as a city of 80,000 people and a region of 600,000 people. She said that scale can make an impact.
Local treatment workers also pointed to gaps in support. Kyle Popish, founder of WholePath Wellness, said he treats people ages 14 to 70 and called for more group support meetings in the area. The article said there are only two Gamblers Anonymous meetings locally, one on Sundays from 5:30 p.m. to 7 p.m. at St. Matthew’s United Evangelical Church in Scranton and another on Wednesdays at 7 p.m. at Waverly United Methodist Church, 105 Church St., Waverly.
State officials have also been trying to give families and educators more tools. The Department of Drug and Alcohol Programs and the Department of Education announced free online resources on protecting children from the risks of sports, online and other forms of gambling. The toolkit is meant as a one-stop shop for educators and parents, and includes guidance on warning signs and where to go for help.
Pennsylvania’s gambling helpline is free, confidential and available 24/7/365 by phone, text message or online chat. The state’s self-exclusion program lets people ask to be excluded from legalized gaming activities in casinos, offsite venues, online, at VGT establishments or on fantasy contests.
