Local communities coming together to promote health

King County launched a new health education campaign, Let's Do This, earlier this week. The campaign focuses on the relationship between neighborhood and health and inspires residents to become involved. The campaign features Mia, an eleven year old King County resident who wants to be a healthy kid and notices aspects of her neighborhood that make it difficult to be healthy.

The campaign is part of King County's Communities Putting Prevention to Work program.

School-based prevention programs shouldn't be the "lonely voices"

According to a story appearing in the Health Behavior News Service, "school prevention programs aimed at curbing alcohol misuse in children are somewhat helpful, enough so to deserve consideration for widespread use." 

It goes on to say that not all school-based substance abuse prevention programs are effective but, “School-based prevention programs that take a social skills-oriented approach or that focus on classroom behavior management can work to reduce alcohol problems in young people.”

The authors concluded that their evidence supported the use of certain generic prevention programs over alcohol-specific ones. They cited the Life Skills Training Program, the Unplugged Program and the Good Behavior Game as particularly effective interventions.

“Some interventions might be more effective in a rural setting with limited alcohol availability but not so effective in a big city with lots of alcohol and drug availability,” researchers said.

They emphasize that “school-based programs are so often expected to do the whole job of prevention, and this is an unfair expectation.” He describes school-based programs functioning as “lonely voices” in an environment saturated with marketing messages promoting youthful drinking. The amount of drinking in a youngster’s home and community and the price of alcohol are other major influences that need addressing, he said. Until then, “we can't expect large effects from school-based programs alone.”

Coalitions, such as Prevention WINS, consider youth substance abuse to be a community problem requiring a community solution.  While Prevention WINS successfully introduced Life Skills Training into Eckstein Middle School, we are currently working to reduce access to alcohol among young people and increase positive parenting skills that have proven to reduce youth substance abuse. 

What is a coalition?

Last week, a Prevention WINS coalition member and I participated in week one of a three-week National Coalition Academy training.  During the week, we learned about the Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF), how to develop a community assessment, and how to create a logic model. 

One of the topics on the first day of the training was defining a coalition.  A coalition is a voluntary, strategic alliance to enhance our ability to achieve a common purpose by sharing risks, responsibilities, resources, and rewards. 

In the substance abuse prevention field, much of the work we have done is through programs.  A coalition is not a program.  Here are a few differences between programs and coalitions.

Long-term Outcomes
Coalitions measure success by examining community-level indicators for substance abuse.  Instead of measuring outcomes by the number of people who participate in a program, coalitions measure longer term outcomes such as rates of use among people who were part of the prevention strategy.

Multiple Causes
Coalitions seek to address multiple causes of substance abuse.  Coalitions look at root causes and address more than personal risk factors or single strategies.

Multiple Actors
Coalition actions are diffused and taken by all members with staff playing a coordinating and supportive role.

Creating healthy communities

Two recent opinion pieces in the Seattle Times brought to mind what it means to live in a healthy community.

A mission to promote health and wellness -- a great example of a Seattle community coming together to "reduce chronic diseases such as hypertension and diabetes in children and youth through obesity prevention."

For city well being, money is not everything -- describes how strong communities are those that "build residents' attachment". This idea compliments the social development strategy that guides Prevention WINS -- if teenagers feel a sense of attachment to our community, their schools, and their families they are more likely to have healthy behaviors.

Coalition partnerships key to success of Guiding Good Choices

"When it comes to preventing drug and alcohol abuse, there is no one-fits-all approach. It takes solutions that are based on a community's unique problems and circumstances," states CADCA's website. The Prevention WINS coalition is based on this premise: that drug and alcohol problems are different in every community and, therefore, need to be addressed differently in each community by the community.

The implementation of Guiding Good Choices in northeast Seattle is a perfect example of how effective communities can be when we come together. Four years ago, Prevention WINS identified a lack of parental monitoring of teenage children as a factor contributing to underage drinking in northeast Seattle. Using local data as a guide, the coalition chose to implement Guiding Good Choices (GGC), an evidence-based parenting curriculum, to address the needs of our community.

Since then, three organizations have done a great job at offering GGC to parents: Children's Hospital, the University Family YMCA, and Seattle Public Schools. They are a perfect example of what coalition work is really about -- community members coming together and each taking on a role to prevent underage drinking and youth substance use.

Why join a substance abuse prevention coalition?

Why do community members get involved in substance abuse prevention coalitions? Check out these short testimonials posted on YouTube by the Circles of San Antonio Community Coalition. A recent CADCA webinar featured their coalition's use of video.

Communities That Care

Communities That Care (CTC) now has its own Wikipedia page. CTC is a coalition-based prevention operating system that uses a public health approach to prevent youth problem behaviors such as violence, delinquency, school drop out and substance abuse. This model is similar to the one used by the NE Seattle Coalition to Prevent Underage Drinking. Like the coalition, CTC's main strategy focuses on strengthening protective factors that can buffer young people from problem behaviors and promote positive youth development. We also work to reduce risk factors.

CTC was developed by the Social Development Research Group at the University of Washington's School of Social Work.