After Your Town Hall Meeting: What Next?
Your community is more aware of underage drinking (UAD) and its consequences as a result
of your Town Hall Meeting (THM). Many members of your community feel compelled to take
preventive action now. Make sure that your THM has been a catalyst for action by ensuring
that this momentum will continue to build and that solutions offered during your THM will be implemented.
Public awareness of UAD is the basis of prevention. Maintaining public awareness after your THM can
reinforce the idea that everyone in a community has an essential role in helping young people avoid alcohol.
For example, parents can actively discourage alcohol use by their children, and local government agencies can
ensure strict compliance checks of alcohol outlets. Strong and continuing public awareness of this issue also
can help in changing current social norms that tolerate or even encourage UAD and in securing funding of
prevention programs that your community might want to implement after your THM.
Maintain and increase public awareness by working through the media and communication channels
that helped to promote your THM. A few suggestions are to:
- Write a letter to the editor about April being Alcohol Awareness Month and in response to any
article about a traffic fatality or juvenile delinquency involving UAD. Include activities that
your community is doing or should do to prevent UAD. Use attendance numbers at your THM to
demonstrate that UAD is an issue of interest to the community.
- Encourage local radio and television stations to air the new public service announcements
(PSAs) to prevent UAD that the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
created in collaboration with the Ad Council. The objective of the
PSAs is to encourage parents
to speak with their children about the dangers of UAD.
- Encourage schools to use their Web sites or newsletters to regularly remind parents about
actions they can take to prevent UAD. Schools are more likely to take this action if you
supply them with a topical issue; for example, why parents should support alcohol-free
after-prom events and graduation parties, and the need for parents to be extra vigilant
during summer months, when the largest percentage of young people first try alcohol.
- Encourage high schools to distribute UAD prevention materials to graduating students
and their parents. Examples are Parents:
Help Your Teens Party Right at Graduation and
What Parents Need to Know About College Drinking,
both available through the NIAAA College
Drinking—Changing the Culture Web site.
Look beyond the media for additional, long-term, ways to keep UAD in the public eye:
- Post a billboard or other signage about UAD and its prevention where parents and other
community members will see it frequently. Local organizations that helped support your THM also
may be willing to fund public signage.
- Create a speakers bureau of people who can seek out and respond to opportunities to discuss
UAD at school and community events throughout the year.
- Involve your community in selecting and implementing evidence-based programs to
prevent UAD, based on community goals and strategies developed during your THM. To help secure
program funding, emphasize that UAD prevention programs also can help to prevent negative behaviors
associated with early alcohol use (e.g., assaults, drug use, injuries, suicide, violence,
and risky sex) and to support positive behaviors (e.g., academic achievement). As a result,
UAD prevention programs are an extremely cost-effective way for communities to invest in
healthy youth development and well-being.
Descriptions of evidence-based and promising programs to prevent UAD can be found on the Web sites
of your State government and on the following Federal Web sites:
Your THM is not meant to be an isolated event or a one-hit wonder, but another step in mobilizing a
community around UAD prevention. Build on the momentum for action created by your THM, from maintaining
and increasing public awareness to facilitating implementation of evidence-based solutions. Taking both
small and big steps after your THM will keep your community moving toward the goal of healthy,
alcohol-free youth.