Kick Butts Day (KBD) a day for activism when thousands of youth in every state and around the world will STAND OUT ... SPEAK UP ... and SEIZE CONTROL AGAINST BIG TOBACCO. If you are a teacher, a parent running a scout troop, or a youth leader, you can hold your own Kick Butts Day event as well.

Not sure what to do with your youth group for KBD? Download the free 2012 Kick Butts Day Activity Guide! It is filled with activity ideas sure to get attention: http://www.kickbuttsday.org/resources/downloads.php   

You don't have time to make flyers to let others know about your event? No time to create a press release? No problem! Download the KBD flyer template and other ready-to-go materials at: http://www.kickbuttsday.org/resources/downloads_promos.php 

Want to see what other kids have done for KBD? Visit the Campain for Tobacco Free Kids' YouTube Channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/tobaccofreekids     

Share your event photos, videos, and other materials with other youth in the North Country on the www.Real-Normal.org blog site by sending your materials to CSAP@nchcnh.org.  

Coalition Rolls out "Healthcare Provider Postcard Campaign"   

The North Country Community Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition is happy to announce the fresh roll out of the "Healthcare Provider Postcard Campaign" aimed at reaching youth and parents with alcohol awareness messages. The postcards will be disseminated during each young person's healthcare visit by their healthcare provider. The postcard has information for youth on one side, and on the flip side has information for their parents.

Research has shown that knowledge of parental disapproval plays a strong role in a teenager's decision not to drink. By presenting this information to both youth and parents, it is hoped that this postcard will start a conversation about drinking where the parent can make their feelings known.  

Coos County Family Health Services has been graciously involved in the final review of the postcard and has agreed to pilot the postcard campaign at all of their physician offices. The postcards will also be sent out to parents of Gorham Middle High School students via Guidance Counselor Matt Saladino. We are currently looking at distributing the postcards via other healthcare and education facilities.  

Pictured above is the Teen Side of the Postcard.

Pictured above is the Parent Side of the Postcard.

The postcard was created collaboratively with Plymouth State University intern Ciara Borghesi, a Health and Wellness Promotion major. We would like to thank Ciara for her time and effort in creating this phenomenal resource for parents and youth of the North Country!

If you have an idea for disseminating the postcards or would like to obtain some for your program, please contact Drew Brown at dbrown@nchcnh.org or call him 259-3700.

What is the YRBS?

The Youth Risk Behavior Survey (YRBS), for those who may not know, is a biennial survey administered to High School Students. The survey measures students' behaviors and attitudes towards certain activities.   To view the YRBS format, please visit: http://www.education.nh.gov/instruction/school_health/documents/2011nhyrbsquestionnaire.pdf .

The North Country was fortunate to have all high schools in the region participate in the 2011 survey.   This full participation from all schools allows for the findings from the survey to be particularly complete and strong. Students may choose to "opt out" of the survey, if consent is given by a parent or guardian.

Using the Data

As Coalition Evaluator, my role is to break the data down into regional and sub-regional data sets in order to best target interventions used to reduce substance abuse in each sub-region. The following charts represent the breakdown of the 2011 YRBS data for the North Country. This is the first in the series of articles that examine some keys measures in the field of substance abuse prevention.     

North Country Health Consortium's Community Substance Abuse Prevention Program has been primarily concerned with trying to prevent the use of three substances: alcohol, tobacco and marijuana. With the national rise in prescription drug abuse, prescription drugs have been added to our list of substances. This list is by no means exhaustive, but it does represent the substances we are most concerned with.   

The first step in addressing substance abuse problems is to find out how much said substances are being used/abused and what areas of the North Country might have higher or lower rates of use, most commonly defined as their use over the month prior to taking the survey. From this stage, a breakdown of usage rates for each substance for the state and region has been created for the last four YRBS cycles. Please note that prescription drugs were not added until 2009, so only two sources of YRBS data exist currently.      

Individual school rates will not be displayed in this article. Instead, for each substance, we will reveal the highest and lowest rates in the North Country, but preserving the anonymity of the schools. Since there has only been full participation from all North Country schools since the 2009 survey, the 2005 and 2007 results that you will see in the graphs displayed only represent those schools within Coos County.

Cigarettes

Historically, the North Country has had a higher rate of cigarette use amongst high school students than the rest of the state. For example, in 2009, the rate in the North Country was 21.2%, which was 2.6% higher than the state as a whole. The chart below (See Figure 1) depicts the same trend for the current year. However, statewide and regional usage rates have declined slightly.    

Alcohol

Like cigarettes, alcohol usage rates have historically been higher in the North Country than the state as a whole. In 2009, the rate use in the North Country was 41.4%, which was 3.5% higher than the rest of the state. For 2011, rates remained roughly flat at the regional and state level (see Figure 2).

 

 Marijuana

Where cigarette and alcohol usage in the North Country are generally higher than the state average, rates of marijuana usage have been historically lower. In 2009 for example, 19.8% of respondents in the North Country reported use of Marijuana in the last 30 days, which is 5.7% lower than the state average.   Though rates are below the state average, usage rates have increased in both the state and region by several percent showing an alarming trend. The 2011 data shows us that the rate of use in the North Country is closing the gap with the higher New Hampshire rate (see Figure 3).

Prescription drugs became a monitored substance on the YRBS in 2009. Prescription drug abuse represents a small but steadily increasing rate and is an extremely dangerous phenomenon. As 2009 represents the baseline for prescription drug data, there is limited trend data to follow. The 2009 YRBS showed a 30 day use rate of 7.4% among North Country students, which represents a rate of 1.9% lower than the state average of 9.3%. In 2011, both the state and regional usage rates increased.

What Now?

In the future, we will touch on factors which influence the decision of a young person to use a substance (i.e. family and peer attitudes, the youth's perception of risk and availability). Other items may be examined which go hand in hand with either higher or lower use. Identifying these "risk and protective factors", which they are referred to as, will be instrumental to understanding why youth are using substances and how best to prevent the use. These topics will appear in future articles in this newsletter.   

Raising awareness among community members of the extent of the substance abuse problems is the key to using this data. The Coalition uses this data to strategically target current and future activities to best combat the problems that exist. The data helps the Coalition to identify strategies for each sub-region as the North Country's varied cultures and varying socioeconomic circumstances pertaining to each sub-region requires prevention strategies to take a more targeted approach versus a one-size fits all approach.

Look for future articles that will explore the relationship of risk and protective factors to use rates and how we can use those to solve the problem of youth substance use here in the North Country.

If you have questions or comments, please contact Drew Brown, Coalition Evaluator, at dbrown@nchcnh.org or by phone at 259-3700.

All are welcome to attend! For more information regarding the Coos County Coalition or the Littleton ATOD Task Force, please contact Diana Gibbs at 259-3700 or at dgibbs@nchcnh.org.