Expanding youth, parent, and community awareness of and engagement with alcohol misuse prevention in Martin County - Summary: Martin County Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition works with students mainly in grades 7-12 in Martin County, Minn., a rural county in south central Minnesota. Alcohol fell out of favor with high schoolers a few years ago, but now the alcohol consumption numbers are increasing again. This grant will help us refocus on underage drinking prevention through advocacy, education, and community collaboration. Abstract: Martin County Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition has a geographic focus on Martin County, Minn., a rural, agricultural county in south central Minnesota known for its drinking culture. Anecdotally alcohol consumption is up by our youth, so we need to steer our attention that direction to reduce risk factors and build up protective factors. Our county has a population of 19,657. Nearly one-quarter is made up of those aged 17 and under (24.8%, census.gov). About 50% of those in the county are on free/reduced meals. We will be working primarily with students in grades 3-12 in all public schools and many of the private schools with secondary influence on family units, businesses, and community members. We will create events and implement strategies that align with the 40 developmental assets from Search Institute students need to become independent, make good choices, and thrive. These include external assets like support, empowerment, boundaries, constructive use of time and internal assets like commitment to learning, positive values, social competencies, and positive identity. We will be using CADCA’s seven strategies (CADCA is an association for prevention coalitions) and SAMHSA’s Strategic Prevention Framework in addition to a logic model. These will help us craft our 12-month action plan. Our goals for the next four years include increasing youth knowledge of and engagement in advocacy in alcohol prevention efforts (90 students); promote and expand availability of safe, alcohol-free community and youth celebrations and events (by 25%) with increased attendance (by 20%); increase community and parental involvement and education on underage drinking and prevention; and expand community awareness of and enforcement of underage drinking laws. We will work to increase the number of students involved with our coalition work (by 25%), train them in advocacy and have them present to school, city, and county elected officials, and support the expansion of the AlaTeen support groups and Teen Intervene evidenced-based curriculum to all public high schools. We also will reach out to all event venues to assist in crafting written best practices for alcohol service. We will work to increase our support of and student participation in alcohol-free community events like post-prom, work to have 100% successful compliance checks in the county, and recognize those businesses that pass compliance checks and have servers attend Responsible Beverage Server Training. As we educate parents, we will work with law enforcement to assess, plan, and implement increased enforcement of the social host ordinance; share key educational material like the Operation Parent Handbook with at least 1,000 parents; raise awareness of alcohol-related harms to youth, and focus on alcohol reduction by 15% (as gauged by the Minnesota Student Survey) to promote health and wellness. We estimate our work will directly impact 2,000 students, 1200 families, and 3,500 additional community members annually. Over the life of the project, we estimate 2,300 students, 1,350 families, and 5,000 additional community members will be served. Indirectly, media campaigns will have another 750,000 impressions (not unique).
