The Marion County SAPC Videos

The Marion County Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition (SAPC) worked together to create three separate videos about underage alcohol and substance abuse prevention. The first video focused on what the Marion County Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition is, our mission, our vision, and what the coalition is doing to promote underage alcohol and substance abuse prevention. The second video focused on parents, sharing with they should know about teens' substance use and prevention. The third video geared toward youth, highlighting teens facts and the importance of making healthy choices as a youth in Marion County. Each video emphasized underage alcohol misuse prevention and was disseminated to 5 school districts in Marion County; shared on SAPC's and Family and Communities Together (FACT) social media pages; and posted on FACT's website. Additionally, one of the videos showcased at the SAPC booth of the Marion County Fair.

There is a general need for prevention education and compliance in Marion County communities. The county's largest community is home of a college that draws students from across the United States. The influence that these young adults have on the teens in our county exacerbates the problem of accessibility to alcohol and other substances. Additionally, there are rising realistic concerns of other substance use among our county youth. Our county communities have experienced both severe injuries and deaths as a result of underage alcohol misuse. In our Communities Talk SAPC videos we have drawn statistics and data from the Kansas Communities That Care Student Surveys conducted each year.

• Reduce prevalence of underage drinking and other substances in community
• Create an ongoing conversation about underage drinking and substance use prevention in the community
• Foster collaboration between community stakeholders for continued underage drinking and substance use prevention activities
• Improve policy/legislation (e.g., reducing alcohol advertising to which youth are exposed; instituting, promoting, or increasing alcohol compliance checks; improving

• Lack of interest from the community
• Unforeseen difficulties when planning our activity

We overcame the unforeseen difficulties of staff changes by making modifications to coalition member responsibilities. In regard to the lack of interest from the community, we found other ways to make the project more accessible to the community such as promoting things online. Lack of interest from the community is an ongoing challenge that we are continuing to address.

• Prevention-related webinars
• StopAlcoholAbuse.gov What’s New email newsletter
• Communities Talk toolkits
• Communities Talk social media content (e.g., Facebook, Twitter)
• These resources were helpful to see other examples projects as well as seeing what was expected in the projects.

Members involved in the planning and implementing of the Communities Talk project included faith-based organizations, parent representation, youth, media, civic groups, youth-serving organizations, and public health institutes. We shared this activity with all sectors of the community through local school districts, on SAPC and Family and Communities Together, Inc. social media pages, as well as on FACT's website. Youth were directly involved in the creation of the third video as they shared their knowledge and/or unawareness of statistics and facts about alcohol and substance misuse.

Yes, it was harder to distribute information and materials, including the videos, because of the pandemic.