Thursday, November 21, 2024
11/21/2024
California Baptist University (CBU), in collaboration with the Healthy Jurupa Valley Coalition and the Jurupa Unified School District (JUSD), has a long-standing partnership to reduce substance use and abuse in the City of Jurupa Valley through the Drug-Free Communities (DFC). The STOP ACT funding will enhance the project’s ability to reduce alcohol use among youth in Jurupa Valley by providing information, improving skills to abstain from alcohol use, reducing youth access to alcohol, and modifying local policies to reduce youth alcohol use. The Healthy Jurupa Valley Drug-Free Communities (DFC) project is focused on the city of Jurupa Valley, a suburban-to-rural area, predominantly Hispanic and Latino with low-to-moderate income in Riverside County. JUSD is the only school district in the area and is comprised of three middle schools (6-8) and four high schools (9-12). The Riverside County Sheriff’s Department provides law enforcement services for the city. The Public Health Institute has labeled Riverside County a “Challenging County” due to high alcohol use rates among youth and alcohol-related hospitalizations and deaths among those ages 13-19 that are significantly higher than the state average (PHI, 2018). Our own DFC Core Measures Survey data reveals that 16.4% of youth ages 12-18 in Jurupa Valley report using alcohol at least once in the past 30 days (DFC, 2020). Alcohol use among females was 11% higher than for other subgroups in 2021. Our data also reveals that 36% of youth perceive little or no harm associated with alcohol use, 32% of youth report that it is somewhat or very easy to obtain alcohol (particularly from social sources), and only 54% report that their parents thought it was “very wrong” or “wrong” to use alcohol. Approximately 22% of middle and 31% of high school students report low confidence (e.g., self-efficacy) to refute peer pressure to use alcohol. Furthermore, our survey data reveals that most parents (67%) have not communicated to their teens that using alcohol is wrong, and almost 32% of teens report being able to access alcohol in the community and use alcohol in their own home (DFC, 2020). As a result, there is now an unprecedented need to focus on alcohol use prevention among youth and young adults in Jurupa Valley, yet few resources to do so. This project aims to: (1) address norms regarding alcohol use by youth, (2) reduce opportunities for underage drinking, (3) create changes in underage drinking prevention and enforcement efforts, and (4) address penalties for underage use. We propose to enhance the community’s ability to prevent alcohol use among teens through: (1) a parent training program to increase parent-child communication and set consequences about alcohol use: (2) implementing an evidence-based alcohol prevention curriculum in JUSD middle and high schools by providing teacher training, implementation assistance, and ongoing teacher support; (3) increase awareness of the City of Jurupa Valley’s Social Host Ordinance through community education and policy development; (4) collaborate with the Jurupa Valley Sheriff’s Department to enforce the Social Host Ordinance. We expect to reach 600-800 students and their parents per year with the alcohol prevention program, modify city policy to increase community awareness of teen alcohol use, and provide ongoing community education. We intend to evaluate the effectiveness of these strategies (both process and outcome evaluation) through continuous program monitoring and youth surveys, including survey items related to alcohol use, perceived risk, and parent and peer disapproval of alcohol use.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).
