An in-depth explanation

Hey everyone!

The coalition meetings are going well and we are making significant progress on a K2 speaker event for Kilgore ISD and on a survey for Kilgore Middle School students about their attitudes about drugs and alcohol. Gathering this information is so important to our future strategies! 

Our next meeting is Thursday, March 26 at Kilgore Middle School at noon in the conference room.

One of my requirements for being a coalition coordinator is that I give 20 minute presentations to community groups about twice a month. I think (hope!) I am getting better at explaining what a community coalition does, so I thought I'd share this latest script with you if you are still trying to wrap your head around it. I made this presentation at the Kilgore Lions Club. (Note: the handouts I mention in the script are on in the links on the right side of this page). It's long, but hey, you try improvising for 20 minutes!

Hello, my name is Rebecca Smith. I work for Next Step Community Solutions, a nonprofit in Tyler that works to address underlying issues that keep East Texans from being successful.

One of our programs is funded through a grant with the Department of State Health Services. We are working to create what the state calls community coalitions—basically bringing members of the community together to address three big issues: underage drinking, marijuana abuse and prescription drug abuse.

According to our regional analysis, the biggest problem far and away is underage drinking. Can anyone guess what the average age of first use of alcohol is in Texas?

It’s 11.5 in Texas. At the national level, it’s 16.

This is a statistic I got from MADD, and it shocked me: “During last year’s back-to-school season (Aug. 15, 2013, to Sept. 16, 2013), there were 196 alcohol-related motor vehicle crashes in Texas involving drivers between 16 and 20 years old under the influence of alcohol.”

That’s almost 200 in one month.

Substance abuse and mental health issues (which often go hand-in-hand) are projected to be the number one cause of disability by the year 2020.

Prevention is handled a little differently, and I think much better, than it was in the past. In the past you had the “Just Say No” message from officials, which wasn’t effective for most people. Now, the state is focused on getting community members involved in addressing the issues in their area that make addiction more likely. We call these risk factors. I have a handout with several risk factors listed for you to consider.

A big risk factor is what we call adverse childhood experiences. These are things like abuse, neglect, or household dysfunction. There was a big study on these experiences, and researchers found that out of the 17,000 people surveyed, about half have experienced one or more instances of abuse, neglect, or household dysfunction in their childhood.

So it’s no wonder that substance abuse is such a problem.

So we have the people who are addicted to alcohol or drugs because it’s a coping mechanism. But early use is a major contributor to addiction as well.

What many people—what many PARENTS—haven’t heard about is the fairly new research (most that I’ve seen came out in the early 2000s) that says the earlier you are introduced to alcohol and drugs, the drastically more likely you are to be addicted and the more dramatically it affects your brain. Many parents think that if they give their children alcohol at home, they are teaching them how to drink responsibly. They don’t realize that they are actually endangering their children’s futures. The better that parents understand that AND communicate it to their children, the less likely it is their children will drink.

But another thing—and this is the good part—that impacts substance abuse is what we call protective factors. Protective factors are things that make it LESS likely that a young person will start using. These are things like having a safe home environment, having affectionate parents, having teachers who hold you to high standards and believe in you. I’ll hand out this list of the 40 developmental assets so you can see more examples of protective factors.

Now, these are split up into two categories—external and internal. And they are both pretty important. When we do the training on this information, they have you go through and check which of these developmental assets you have. I have a colleague whose family has a history of substance abuse, and she realized most of her assets were from her own internal motivation. So there are those kids that come from not the greatest of situations but are able to break those cycles. But they are rare.

So what our group does is look at data from the community that tells us which risk factors are a problem and which protective factors are lacking, and we systematically address each issue as we have the manpower and the resources to do so.

This work can be a little nebulous when I explain it to people, so here’s an analogy that really helped solidify it for me. If you had fish that were dying in a lake, you wouldn’t blame the fish; you would look for what was wrong with the lake that was making the fish sick.

We hope to bring together members of the community from every background: law enforcement, the faith community, youth, parents, and members of civic groups like yourself. We need people to make presentations and spread awareness.

Awareness of how early use promotes addiction and hinders brain development is just one of our projects. We are also working with the Kilgore Police Department—and they’ve been great, I cannot speak of them highly enough—to work with the TABC to catch retailers selling alcohol to minors with minor volunteers and undercover officers. You’d be amazed how often that happens. We are just getting started getting officers trained and getting policy in place. So hopefully we can set it up so that there are consistent, sustainable stings. Research from other states shows that is the best way to make sure retailers are doing what they are supposed to.

Another project we’re working on is a partner with Kilgore Middle School. You all have some great administrative staff at the schools here. Kilgore Middle School has an advisory period where kids either have the opportunity to attend tutorials or UIL practice from 8 to 8:25 in the morning. The students who don’t need either of those are kept in one of two gyms or the cafeteria, separated by grade. So there are about 300 kids every day who we have the opportunity to teach about substance abuse and mental health. It’s a great opportunity.

And it’s desperately needed. I’ve spoken with administrators in the area who have already dealt with students being arrested for using, students who self-identify as self-harming, and students who have made suicide attempts.

These kids need their community to invest in them. They need you to invest in them.

So we are looking for a program that will address those other mental health issues as well as substance abuse. And there are a lot of programs out there that have been proven effective in addressing both, because those behaviors often come from the same place of unhealthy thinking. Once we find a program that will work in that large group setting, we will need volunteers to help deliver it; I think you all would be perfect for that.

As another example of the countless ways you can address risk factors, the project my colleague who covers the counties north of here is starting is something that her coalition came up with to address the issue of parents providing alcohol in their homes to minors. It’s called the “Not in my House” campaign; parents sign a pledge that they won’t provide alcohol to minors—their kids or anyone else’s—in their home. They also put a “not in my house” yard sign in their yard. We’re hoping this will create a groundswell of parents taking a stand. This addresses what we call the social access risk factor.

Another example of something that addresses a different issue our grant covers is what another colleague is doing in Smith County to prevent prescription drug abuse. Research has been showing us that kids will sometimes steal their parents or grandparents prescriptions, which is very dangerous. So my colleague is raising money to buy an incinerator for the police department to safely dispose of prescription drugs (a lot of people think you should flush them, but that’s actually really bad for the water supply).

All our strategies are different, because our communities are different. A big part of coalition work is understanding what will work for your community at the time.

There are so many different ways to address the factors that impact the chances of substance abuse. I read recently that a child who eats dinner with his family at least about five days a week is 50 percent less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol. We were daydreaming about that the other day and thought wouldn’t it be fun to partner with churches to offer a weekly family meal or to suggest dinner conversation topics, or have a website with suggested easy recipes (that was my favorite, I love looking at recipes).

I am really excited about where prevention is going. It’s so much more thoughtful and strategic.

But really, our biggest obstacle is finding people who are passionate about the future of the community and willing to do something about it by helping us come up with ways to reduce substance abuse. We have big ideas, like ordinances, restaurant policies, creative campaigns. The sky is the limit, but we need more capacity before we can tackle them.

I would love to provide each family in Kilgore with a little prevention Jiminy Cricket, but we don’t have the capacity to do that. Maybe next year.

This is a long road I am hoping you join me on. Sometimes I get frustrated because prevention work can take so long, but one of the things that keeps me inspired is looking at the history of the anti-smoking movement. In the 60s, about 40 percent of people smoked. But after decades of education about how terrible it is for you, as well as ordinances and policies that protect people from secondhand smoke (and make smoking more inconvenient), and rising cigarette prices, the percentage of people who smoke now is down to 18 percent and dropping. We can do that same thing with our goals in substance abuse prevention.

So, if you are interested in being part of the coalition, I have a sign-up sheet up here. Our next meeting will be at noon Dec. 18 in the conference room at Kilgore Middle School.