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How to Create Resilient Lives and Neighborhoods
Hosted by:
Rockville Centre Coalition for Youth
How does alcohol and other drug misuse affect your community?
Alcohol seems easy to come by in our community. To accurately assess teen alcohol use in our community, we compared results from our 2019 Youth Development Survey with the National Institute on Drug Abuse’s 2019 Monitoring the Future Survey. From those results, we found in the past 30 days, alcohol use by teens has been significantly higher than the national average. Teens are reporting easy access to alcohol at home, parties, and outdoor events. Police and parents are regularly reporting serious issues with teen drinking, and the police report nearly 200 hospital runs a month for alcohol and other drug use.
What challenge(s) did you face in planning your activity this year?
- Particularly severe or resistant substance use issues in our community
What are your next steps?
- Host follow-up meetings or activities
- Conduct research efforts to learn more about issues in our community
- Create a public education campaign to raise awareness and/or change behaviors around underage drinking (i.e., create PSAs and other promotional materials)
Which Communities Talk resources (or other SAMHSA resources) were most helpful for your activity?
- Prevention videos, such as College Drinking: Prevention Perspectives
- StopAlcoholAbuse.gov website
- Communities Talk website
- Communities Talk planning guides
- Communities Talk social media content (e.g., Facebook, Twitter)
How did a Communities Talk event help you address those issues?
- Mobilized coalition members or other stakeholders
- Engagement with local government leaders and business owners to consider policy changes such as social hosting laws or restaurant worker trainings
- Educated youth and parents
- Built community cohesiveness and support for our efforts
- Created an opportunity to share resources and practices with other community stakeholders
- Helped plan future prevention efforts
- Made making good health behavior choices fun and engaging
- Raised awareness of substance abuse and/or underage drinking issues in our community
How did your event make an impact on underage drinking in your community?
Our event helped heighten our community’s awareness of underage drinking by sparking a community-wide conversation. It allowed us to work cooperatively among our schools, law enforcement, and local businesses to raise awareness of underage drinking, discuss prevention tactics, and begin to reduce alcohol misuse in our community.
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