The City of Dover, New Hampshire plans to prevent and reduce the abuse of opioids or methamphetamines and the abuse of prescription medications among youth ages 12-18 in our local community. This will be accomplished by the Dover Coalition for Youth using a variety of strategies including policy change, providing information to stakeholders and the public, enhancing skills and reducing various barriers.The project, The City of Dover's CARA grant to prevent and reduce the abuse of opioids or methamphetamines and the abuse of prescription medications among youth ages 12-18, will serve youths, teachers, school staff, medical prescribers, and parents/other adults in the community. We expect to serve approximately 3800 people annually and over 10,000 during the life of the project. Specifically, we plan to enhance the ability of the Coalition to create community-level change regarding opioids and the misuse of prescription medications by increasing knowledge of coalition staff and members by having 80% of members reporting that they are knowledgeable or very knowledgeable about opioid/Rx misuse on the annual coalition member survey by June 1, 2019. Also, by June 1, 2019 we will enhance intergovernmental cooperation and coordination on the issue of opioids and the misuse of prescription medications among school-age youth by formalizing communication of such issues between the police and schools. This project will also reduce youth prescription drug and opioid misuse by addressing the factors in the community that increase the risk of substance misuse and promoting the factors that minimize the risk of substance abuse and opioid misuse by addressing the factors in the community that increase the risk of substance misuse and promoting the factors that minimize the risk of substance abuse. We plan to increase the perception of risk of prescription drug and opioid misuse among Dover youth in grades 7-12 from 91% to 94% among middle school and 88% to 90% among high school students, by June 1, 2019. By June 1, 2019, we hope to increase the perception of peer disapproval of prescription drug/opioid misuse among youth in grades 7-12 from 94% to 96% in middle school and 82% to 88% in high school. We plan to increase the perception that parents disapprove of prescription drug/opioid misuse from 97% in middle school and 94% in high school to 98% in all grades, by June 1, 2019. We expect to decrease the rate at which youth report it is easy to access prescription drug/opioids from 63% in high school to 70%, by June 1, 2019. We also plan to increase the number of prescribers utilizing the NH Prescription Drug Monitoring Program in Strafford County by 10 percent, as measured by the state PDMP program manager, by June 1, 2019.The strategies that we will use to achieve these goals are policy change, providing information/enhancing skills, and enhancing access/reducing barriers.
