The Dunn County Partnership for Youth (DCPFY) is a county-wide coalition that a prevention program of Arbor Place, Inc. in Menomonie, Wisconsin. Concern about increasing rates of e-cigs/vaping and Rx drug abuse by teens is mobilizing the coalition to join schools, law enforcement, medical providers, youth serving organizations, and other stakeholder groups to develop and implement programming to decrease the growing use and related problems.
DCPFY's mission statement is "Collaborate with Dunn County resources developing dynamic programming to serve youth and families. Efforts focus on ATOD (alcohol, tobacco, and other drug) related issues, parenting, mental health, youth engagement, and emerging concerns."
The goals of the coalition are to establish and strengthen collaboration between key stakeholders in communities across that county that can help to prevent youth substance use. The coalition will achieve its goals by implementing several strategies to impact identified needs: In the most recent student survey, tobacco use by teens Dunn County is higher than the state rate and over triple the national rate of underage tobacco use. And, these figures don’t even include e-cigs as questions related to vaping nicotine products were just added to the states student surveys. One reason for this high use is that, in underage teens were able to purchase cigarettes, chewing tobacco and e-juice nearly 21.9% of the time in the county, which is much higher than the state rate of 5.8% and also higher than the surrounding counties. Our strategies to reduce teen tobacco use involve working with court elected officials and schools to reduce access to tobacco and/or increase negative consequences for using tobacco and nicotine products (i.e. required attendance at tobacco education class in lieu of school suspension, increased fine for underage use, etc.) Student use of prescription drugs in Dunn County is also noticeably higher than the national average (3.5% vs. 2%). Our strategies to reduce teen Rx use is to increase the awareness of community members, especially adults, about the importance of monitoring and securing prescriptions to prevent teen access to medications. We will also increase the number of Rx disposal events, such as the DEA Drug Take Back days, in Dunn County Communities and provide educational sessions on Rx misuse/abuse in High School Health classes. Underage alcohol and teen marijuana use will also be addressed by working with key stakeholders in Dunn County Communities to increase awareness of risks, reduce access to the substances, and educate adults in the community of local resources.
We anticipate that our efforts during the first year of funding will engage 200-300 adults, and impact 500-600 youth. In time, impact of the programming, classes and events we offer should increase as our efforts expand across the county, at least tripling the number of parents/adults who learn how to talk with children the dangers of these substance and be provided with resources to seek help if needed.