Communities Talk to Prevent Underage Drinking

We held a virtual Town Hall over Zoom, with guest speakers from the ASPIRE Counseling Center and Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD), as well as a local recovery advocate. Throughout the event we learned about brain development as it relates to early substance misuse, provided advice for teens who feel alone, and provided resources to encourage prevention strategies for parents and good decision-making for teens. The recovery advocate connected with teens and parents as she discussed her personal experiences with substance misuse. The event concluded with a Q&A session. Following the event, we sent resources from each of the participating agencies to our attendees.  

Unfortunately, instances of drunk driving happen frequently in our community, which is why we were fortunate enough to have two volunteers share their experiences with drunk driving. One of our volunteers is a survivor of a drunk driving crash, and the other has now been 10+ years sober after driving drunk. These stories were very eye opening to our audience, and we received lots of great feedback.

• 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
• Awareness and enforcement of social host laws) to support prevention of underage drinking

• There were no challenges. However, in the future, we would like to begin the promotion of our event sooner to get a larger crowd.

We made sure to use our stipend money to advertise and sponsor our event on Facebook and Instagram. Our digital ads had more than 1,000 views. While we would have liked a larger crowd, we were happy to reach as many people as we did. 

• StopAlcoholAbuse.gov website
• Communities Talk website
• Communities Talk social media content (e.g., Facebook, Twitter)

We collaborated with MADD, the ASPIRE Counseling Center, and a local recovery advocate. By working with these agencies, we learned a lot about what they have to offer and how we can all work together to prevent underage drinking in our community. Our intended audience was parents, teens, and public health professionals. Overall, we had a successful turnout, and we were able to reach our audience by getting the message out via Eventbrite.  

The COVID-19 pandemic did not affect the planning or execution of our activities.