Prevention principles: in the community

As the Prevention WINS coalition starts planning youth substance abuse prevention activities under our new Drug Free Communities grant, we will be guided by information about what has proven to work.

The National Institute on Drug Abuse has identified several Prevention Principles intended to help people deliver research-based prevention programs at the community level. The first four principles cover risk and protective factors.

Principle 1: Prevention programs should enhance protective factors and reverse or reduce risk factors.

Risk and protective factors differ from community to community. The Prevention WINS coalition identified the following risk factors in our community:

• Favorable attitudes towards drug use among high school students (individual/peer domain);
• Poor family management -- parents monitor their children less and less as the get older (family domain);
• Youth who use are not caught and when they are very few consequences exist (community domain).

Principle 2: Prevention programs should address all forms of drug abuse . . . including underage use of legal drugs; the use of illegal drugs; and the inappropriate use of legally obtained substances.

The tested and effective prevention programs implemented by Prevention WINS over the past four years include Life Skills Training and Guiding Good Choices. Both of these programs address all forms of drug abuse. In the future, the coalition will continue to address all forms of substance abuse using environmental strategies.

Principle 3: Prevention programs should address the type of drug abuse problem in the local community.

In northeast Seattle, the top two drugs used by teenagers are alcohol and marijuana according to the Healthy Youth Survey. The coalition's action plan addresses both.

Principle 4: Prevention programs should be tailored to address risks specific to audience characteristics such as age, gender, and ethnicity.

This will especially be true as the coalition develops a social norms campaign and works on local advocacy issues as part of the DFC grant.

With these four principles in mind, community organizations are encouraged to:

• Develop integrated, comprehensive prevention strategies rather than one-time community-based events.
• Provide young people with structured time with adults through mentoring.
• Increase positive opportunities, skills, and recognition through community service and other activities.
• Communicate and enforce clear policies.
• Organize at the neighborhood level.

Prevention WINS January meeting

Save the date . . .

DFC Celebration & General Coalition Meeting
Thursday, January 20, 2011
8:00 - 9:30 a.m.
Seattle Children's Hospital, G-1026

Let's draw the line

The Washington State Coalition to Reduce Underage Drinking (RUaD) recently launched a new campaign called Let's Draw the Line. The campaign's overall goal is that everyone in our state wants to draw the line between youth and alcohol. Communities throughout the state will be organizing Let's Draw the Line events and activities, including Prevention WINS. Visit http://www.letsdrawtheline.org/ for more information.

Liquor laws as prevention

Though the two initiatives that would have deregulated or privatized hard alcohol distribution and sales in Washington failed this week, the issue won't be going away any time soon. Already, a state senator has said that he will take another run at it during the upcoming legislative session, according to a story on KPLU.

The Dangers of Alcohol Deregulation: The United Kingdom Experience, written by Pamela Erickson of Public Action Management, provides information about how the regulation of alcohol prevents underage drinking and other public health and safety problems and what we can learn from the liberalized alcohol laws in the UK.

The report stresses the need for multiple strategies to prevent alcohol-related problems: "There is no sliver bullet to curb alcohol problems. What works in the United States may not work for the United Kingdom and vice versa. But, the U.K. situation has highlighted the need for comprehensive regulation rather than deregulation and high taxes. . . . As we have seen, a good system to combat alcohol problems has several measures to ensure prices are not too low and availability is controlled. The system must also have age restrictions, anti-drunk driving measures and effective enforcement."

As the Prevention WINS coalition moves forward with our advocacy work, we will look at all policies that prevent underage drinking and drug use. Our advocacy work will complement our ongoing work with youth and parents and our focus on positive youth development.

Free online learning opportunities

How can we keep kids drug-free? These free online learning opportunities highlight a few prevention strategies.

Raising Drug-Free Kids
December 2, 2010
On Demand
-- See why the teenage brain is not just an adult brain with fewer miles on it
-- Learn which tactics work best to keep kids away from drugs
-- Find out what has worked for other coalitions and how this may help you
-- See how you can help guide your kids to make better decisions
-- Find out what resources are out there to help coalitions reach parents

More information is available on the CADCA website.

Get in the Game! Webinar Series
Part 1: Alcohol Marketing and Youth - Why it's a problem and what you can do
December 14, 2010
10:00 a.m. - noon

Part 2: Untrain Your Brain - Tools to unravel alcohol advertising and Expectancies
December 16, 2010
10:00 a.m. - noon

More information is available on the Drug Free Action Alliance website.

Energy drinks and alcohol

A few more links to information about energy drinks, both with and without alcohol:

College Students Who Use Energy Drinks More Than Twice as Likely to Initiate Non-medical Use of Prescription Stimulants and Analgesics in Subsequent Year

The Mix with Dangerous Risks: Energy Drinks and Alcohol.

Teens: how to get drunk and stay drunk

It wasn't the so-called date rape drug slipped into a drink that sent nine college freshman to the hospital. It was an "alcohol energy drink" that did the damage. Our state attorney general Rob McKenna immediately notified the Food and Drug Administration (letter) as a follow up to his office's request a year ago asking the FDA to investigate these drinks.

A quick search on the brand that the teenagers drank at the party tells a story of frequent abuse, little recognition of the dangers of mixing a depressant (alcohol) with a stimulant (caffeine) and the blatant marketing to teenagers.

FDA action so far-- warnings to manufacturers-- resulted in Anhaeuser-Busch ending production of their alcopop. We'll keep watching what happens with this latest news.

We did it!

Prevention Works in Seattle (WINS), the community coalition serving northeast Seattle, was awarded a 2010 Drug Free Communities grant! This five year award will enable us to continue our community-based youth substance abuse prevention work.

From 2006 - 2010, the coalition's grantee was Seattle Public Schools. The DFC grant was written in collaboration with Seattle Children's Hospital which will now act as the coalition's grantee.

Thanks goes out to all who have built the coalition over the past few years and who contributed to our successful grant proposal.

Final post . . . at least for now

The Prevention WINS coalition has been funded by a SPF-SIG grant through the Washington State Division of Behavioral Health and Recovery since 2006. The grant ends next week. In partnership with Seattle Children's Hospital, Prevention WINS has applied for a Drug Free Communities (DFC) grant but, if it is awarded, funds won't kick in until October.

With that in mind, this is my last post for a while. The next post will announce if the coalition will receive DFC funds. So, check back here at the end of August/early September for news about the DFC grant and the coalition.

Thanks goes out to all coalition members who have increased the ability of our community to prevent underage drinking!

Enjoy the summer and I hope to be back with good news before it's over!

Highly involved partners boost coalition success

A recent study evaluated the efforts of the Allies Against Asthma Program, demonstrating that community coalitions with highly involved partnerships are the most successful in producing policy and systems change. The results offer useful implications for anti-drug coalitions to achieve community-level outcomes, according to CADCA's latest Research Into Action bulletin.

At the end of the bulletin, CADCA notes that growing evidence demonstrates that coalitions can achieve community-level outcomes by focusing on policies and systems to affect key health indicators.

The findings also suggest that coalitions with fewer highly engaged partners, as opposed to many less engaged partners, contribute to greater changes.