The 90-minute centerpiece of "Addiction," a 14-part HBO series that debuts tomorrow, will be screened Saturday at Duquesne University as part of a national effort to launch community dialogues about drug and alcohol abuse, treatment and recovery.

Mothers of children with addiction problems from the Pittsburgh area are featured in the documentary, and two of them will be members of a panel that will take questions from the audience after the screening, said Robin Horston Spencer, director of Message Carriers, which is sponsoring the event with Duquesne University.

Other panelists include Dr. Neil Capretto, medical director of Gateway Rehabilitation Center, and Allegheny County Jail warden Ramon Rustin.

Audience discussion could help the experts "see where we should take this dialogue and what can we do to take our communities back," Ms. Spencer said.

Pittsburgh is one of 30 cities involved in a spinoff national campaign called the Addiction Project, which was developed by a partnership of HBO, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Institute on Drug Abuse and the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism.

Along with outreach activities in each city to raise awareness of the disease of drug and alcohol addiction, the project includes a companion book, four addiction-themed films and an interactive Web site, according to a press release.

Message Carriers plans to hold, in collaboration with local hospitals, four town hall meetings next month and a recovery walk and rally in September, Ms. Spencer said.

Saturday's event, which will be at Duquesne's Wolfe Lecture Hall in the Bayer Learning Center, will begin at 5:30 p.m. with refreshments. At 6:30 p.m. there will be a national call-in to give participants a chance to hear from experts around the country, followed by the screening from 7 to 8:30 p.m. and the panel discussion.

For more information, contact Ms. Spencer at Robin@messagecarriers.org or 412-361-0142, or go to www.messagecarriers.org.

"It's free to the public," she said. "I am expecting well over a hundred people," but there's room for more.

For more information about the national grassroots campaign, go to www.addictionaction.org.