|
Back to Success Stories
Family Game Night
Hosted by:
Tooele County Health Department and North Valley Communities That Care
Please briefly describe your Communities Talk activity.
The North Valley Communities That Care coalition held a family game night at a local elementary school in Stansbury Park, where families played board games together, had dinner, and learned about why underage drinking is harmful. Parents were educated on their role in preventing underage drinking by setting clear guidelines and creating strong bonds with their children. To continue promoting strong bonds beyond this event, there was a prize drawing at the end, so many families got to take home a game to play together.
How does alcohol and other drug misuse affect your community?
There is a general need for underage drinking prevention in the Stansbury Park community. Data from the 2021 Student Health and Risk Prevention Survey tells us that use of alcohol in the past 30 days by 6th-12th graders in Stansbury Park has increased since 2019 (5.6 percent to 5.9 percent). Binge drinking rates among the same age group in our community are 3.8 percent. The top places where youth in our area get alcohol are from friends at a party or from someone they know who is 21 or older. Additionally, 23 percent of those youth who drink alcohol get it from home with their parents’ permission. This tells us that parents need to understand the risks of letting their children drink alcohol and need the knowledge and tools in order to effectively prevent that behavior.
What goal(s) did you hope to accomplish with your Communities Talk activity?
- 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
What challenge(s) did you face in planning your activity this year?
- Needed additional resources to conduct activity
How did you overcome these challenges?
We needed additional funding to provide dinner at the event. Luckily, we were able to move some of our funding around and we were able to make that happen!
What are your next steps?
- Expand our coalition with new partnerships in the community
- The Parents Empowered campaign in Utah s focused on underage drinking prevention. A local grocery store has agreed to install Parents Empowered messaging in their stores. We will be working with them to do that installment and host a press event to roll it out.
Which Communities Talk resources (or other SAMHSA resources) were most helpful for your activity?
- Communities Talk website
- Communities Talk planning guides
- Communities Talk toolkits
Who did you involve in your activity planning, and who did your activity impact?
Our activity was a collaborative effort involving North Valley Communities That Care, Old Mill Elementary School, and Game Haven, a local business that provided games for us to use at the event. They also donated a gift card for the prize drawing. The event impacted parents and children who attend Old Mill Elementary School. Our target audience was parents in the Stansbury Park area, and we were able to reach them through this event. Two members of our local youth coalition and three youth from Stansbury High School HOPE Squad volunteered by helping check families in, giving them instructions, and cleaning up after the event.
Did the COVID-19 pandemic affect the planning or execution of your activities?
Our event was not affected by the pandemic.
|
|
Return to Success Stories