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Community Partnerships to Help Communities Talk
Hosted by:
Mohave Area Partnership Promoting Educated Decisions (MAPPED)
How does alcohol and other drug misuse affect your community?
Our community is located close to casinos in Laughlin, Nevada, where alcohol is available 24 hours a day in large quantities and marijuana use is legal. Youth are raised in a culture where they are exposed to excessive alcohol and marijuana consumption being very socially acceptable.
What challenge(s) did you face in planning your activity this year?
- Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we had to cancel our event for the time being.
How did you overcome these challenges?
We are planning to host this event as soon as we are able to do so, as we developed mutually beneficial partnerships with school administrators, school resource officers, educators, and community youth.
What are your next steps?
- Create new action groups to tackle specific issues raised during our Communities Talk activity
- Support new prevention policies, legislation, or social ordinances
- 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-related webinars
- StopAlcoholAbuse.gov website
- Communities Talk website
- Communities Talk planning guides
- Communities Talk toolkits
- Communities Talk social media content (e.g., Facebook, Twitter)
- Communities Talk support staff
How did a Communities Talk event help you address those issues?
- Mobilized coalition members or other stakeholders
- 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?
Although our event had to be rescheduled until further notice due to the COVID-19 pandemic, we were still able to use our stipend money to display our prevention message on a digital billboard found on a heavily traveled highway, and it generated more than 32,000 weekly impressions. Luckily, because the billboard was digital, we were able to edit the date and show that our event will be rescheduled.
Planning this event allowed us to create partnerships among community leaders to shed light on the issues facing our community—and especially our youth. Our partnership committee of school administrators, youth groups, and young adult groups were quick to show their support for these issues and agree to participate in future events. We received pledges from various partners to donate food, radio, and print media. We intend to hold this event in the near future when it is safe and feasible to do so.
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