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7/1/2010 - News, news, more news, very important stuff, read more!
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The idea is that the coalition focuses on the reasons why there are drugs in our community and what in the community is allowing drugs to be present in order to figure out how to eliminate them. Therefore, we focus on the community norms, or community environment to figure out how to change the community to be drug free.
For example, a particular street or neighborhood that may known to be in a high drug trafficking area and the youth there are growing up thinking that selling drugs close to home is normal. This is an example of an environmental condition that can be changed in a number of ways, such as by increasing law enforcement in the area, educating youth as to what a non-drug neighborhood would look like, and working with local residents to remove this danger. By doing those things, we change the condition of the environment in order to make drug free life-styles a normal aspect of the environment.
Below are the seven steps the coalition is taking to promote these environmental changes. Currently, the coalition is focusing on steps 1-4, but we are making plans to implement steps 5-7. It’s important to note that these strategies do not have to happen in order, but often do.
7 Strategies
- Providing Information — Educational presentations, workshops or seminars or other presentations of data (e.g. public announcements, brochures, dissemination, billboards, community meetings, forums, Web-based communication).
- Enhancing Skills — Workshops, seminars or other activities designed to increase the skills of participants, members and staff needed to achieve population-level out-comes (e.g. training, technical assistance, distance learning, strategic planning retreats, curricula development).
- Providing Support — Creating opportunities to support people to participate in activities that reduce risk or enhance protection (e.g. providing alternative activities, mentoring, referrals, support groups or clubs).
- Enhancing Access/Reducing Barriers — Improving systems and processes to increase the ease, ability, and opportunity to utilize those systems and services (e.g. assuring healthcare, childcare, transportation, housing, justice, education, safety, special needs, cultural and language sensitivity).
- Changing Consequences (Incentives/Disincentives) — Increasing or decreasing the probability of a specific behavior that reduces risk or enhances protection by altering the consequences for performing that behavior (e.g. increasing public recognition for deserved behavior, individual and business rewards, taxes, citations, fines, revocations/loss of privileges).
- Physical Design — Changing the physical design or structure of the environment to reduce risk or enhance protection (e.g. parks, landscapes, signage, lighting, outlet density).
- Modifying/Changing Policies — Formal change in written procedures, by-laws, proclamations, rules or laws with written documentation and/or voting procedures (e.g. workplace initiatives, law enforcement procedures and practices, public policy actions, systems change within government, communities and organizations).