Iowa’s Coordinated Town Hall Meetings
Underage drinking is clearly a problem that can best be resolved through
a unified approach. In Iowa, community-based organizations that host a
Town Hall Meeting sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health
Services Administration are an example of statewide collaboration.
Recommendations made by the National Prevention Network of
community-based organizations (CBOs) to be invited to host Town Halls
are coordinated through the Iowa Department of Public Health. An
independent statewide organization, the Alliance of Coalitions for
Change (AC4C), agrees to help coordinate scheduling of these events and
also the culmination meeting, which is held after all of the other Iowa
Town Hall Meetings have taken place. For 2012, 33 events were scheduled
across the state.
AC4C communicates with participating Iowa CBOs
and provides them with Town Hall Meeting survey questions. In 2012, some
questions that AC4C asked all event organizers to add to their
participant surveys included “How easy is it for youth to obtain
alcohol?” or “Where do youth obtain alcohol?” At the culmination
meeting, survey results and other issues and recommendations identified
at the earlier events are reported. AC4C uses survey data to help frame
support for state-level policy changes. The survey provides snapshots of
the underage drinking environment in Iowa, accessibility to alcohol by
underage drinkers statewide, and opportunities for implementing
prevention measures across the state. In this way, Town Hall Meetings
provide Iowa with an ongoing mechanism for gathering community feedback
that can be used to assess progress in reducing and preventing underage
alcohol use and its consequences. In the 2012 AC4C survey, for example,
88 percent of youth and 97 percent of adults answered “Yes” to the
question “Do you believe adults who provide alcohol to youth on their
own property should be held accountable?”
Other states may want
to adopt the Iowa model in making Town Hall Meetings an integrated
element of continuous, statewide strategic planning.
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