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Communities Talk Town Hall - Duplin County
Hosted by:
Duplin County Substance Use Coalition
How does alcohol and other drug misuse affect your community?
We are a very rural community with no afterschool activities other than sports for youth to participate in and keep their minds occupied after school finishes for the day. We have a huge need for substance use and misuse prevention efforts in the community, as many underage youth are unattended after school with access to alcohol, and our community is also facing high rates of methamphetamine use.
What challenge(s) did you face in planning your activity this year?
- Unforeseen difficulties when planning our activity
How did you overcome these challenges?
Initially the event was going to be a collaboration with the local 4-H program during their Christmas party. However, it was cancelled, so we moved our planning efforts to an April event. Unfortunately, COVID-19 cancelled our April event, so we reached out to the North Carolina Technical and Training Assistance Center to set up a webinar as a virtual event in June instead.
What are your next steps?
- Host follow-up meetings or activities
- Expand our coalition with new partnerships in the community
Which Communities Talk resources (or other SAMHSA resources) were most helpful for your activity?
- Communities Talk e-Alerts
How did a Communities Talk event help you address those issues?
- Educated youth and parents
- 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?
Those that attended our webinar were impressed with our speaker from “Talk It Out NC,” a statewide campaign established by the North Carolina Alcoholic Beverage Control commission to address underage drinking. Our county manager participated, along with folks from Local Management Entities/Managed Care Organizations (LMEs/MCOs), the Department of Social Services, and Guardian ad Litem (an organization that equips community volunteers to serve abused and neglected children by advocating for their best interests in court), among others. Unfortunately, we don’t believe that any youth attended the webinar, partially due to a lack of virtual resources available to them. Since we had such high interest from those that did attend, our coalition chair decided that the coalition would plan another session soon.
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