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Home | Coalition Spotlight

Coalition Spotlight: Grundy County C2000

The Grundy County C2000 coalition in collaboration with the Grundy County Health Department has been working to establish a smoke free ordinance in the town of Trenton, Missouri.   The coalition has most recently surveyed community members on their knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs about smoking with 63% of those surveyed in favor of a smoke free ordinance.   The coalition has partnered with the local high school to create tables and documents to organize and analyze the data.  The coalition has been running a media campaign on the dangers of secondhand smoke; broadcasting messages on radio and in the newspaper.  The coalition plans to approach the city council at some point this summer but currently they are working to identify individuals and groups within the community that would help support the coalition’s efforts to establish a smoke free ordinance.

The Grundy County C2000 coalition held it’s first after prom event this year.  The community had not had an after prom in nearly 20 years.  While numbers were low, the coalition was pleased with the attendance and the favorable response from the students there.  The coalition plans to keep the event going in the coming years and eventually hand it off to parents.

Coalition Spotlight: 417Squad

The Community Partnership of the Ozarks has helped organize a group of Springfield high school students called 417SQUAD (Students Questioning Using and Abusing Drugs) who want to make a difference in their world.

This group formed as a prevention coalition in the 2013-2014 school year and they meet monthly as a team of 12-15 students, discussing issues that their peers face in an attempt to provide solutions in various ways, such as advocating for positive alternative activities and sharing information pertinent to their age group.

In addition to providing prevention strategies to their peers, 417SQUAD provides representation on the Community Partnership’s Fighting Back Coalition, which consists of leadership from all of the Greene County prevention coalitions. They provide a valuable voice in providing a youth’s perspective on prevention strategies relevant to their peers. They are also able to share ideas and receive support from the community for their efforts.

 During this school year, the 417SQUAD learned that 1 in 3 teens experience dating abuse, including physical, emotional, verbal or sexual abuse/manipulation, and that 67% of teens never tell anyone about the abuse. The team became passionate about sharing this information because they felt that if more people realized how prevalent the issue was, they could help make it less taboo to discuss the topic and/or seek help.

Taking action, they partnered with the Violence Free Families Coalition (VFF) to help promote an awareness campaign about this issue. VFF had already placed ads to educate teens on the topic at the Battlefield Mall, a local hotspot for adolescents to hang out with friends.

To add to the campaign, the teens scripted, filmed, and edited a public service announcement (PSA) depicting a scene of teen dating abuse and offering resources for help, which will air on school TVs and various websites. They also applied for and received grant funding to purchase movie theater ads, which will air during this summer’s major blockbuster movies that teens will most likely go to see. To spark conversation, the teens also developed a hashtag (#MakeItStop417) to use on social media to spread awareness about the campaign website (makeitstop417.org).

Prior to this teen dating abuse campaign, a member of the 417SQUAD was featured in a suicide prevention PSA campaign throughout Springfield and the surrounding area. 417SQUAD members also helped develop the campaign and its message, which mainly targeted youth and urged individuals to talk to someone they know who may be struggling with suicidal thoughts, as this has shown to reduce the likelihood of a suicide attempt.  There have been many people impacted by this campaign and at least one life saved when a local teen, after seeing the PSA, talked to a friend who was thinking about suicide.

To further educate themselves, 417SQUAD traveled to Jefferson City in March to attend the ACT Missouri Speak Hard conference. This conference is intended solely for youth from across the state to gather and learn about drug and violence prevention strategies as well as to network with their peers in Missouri. Six high school students from Springfield attended the conference and reported that they learned a great deal of information and are excited to implement new ideas here in Springfield!

417SQUAD will continue to meet throughout the summer to develop more prevention strategies for next year!

Coallition Spotlight: Youth Community Coalition

The Youth Community Coalition (YC2) is a network of over 70 organizations and individuals whose goal is to help youth develop into productive and self-sufficient citizens by working together to decrease substance abuse and promote healthy behaviors among the youth in Boone County. YC2 promotes community collaboration around issues concerning healthy choices, positive activities, education, employment, service, and the prevention of substance abuse. Ultimately our coalition works to build the capacity of each of its members, to do their amazing work for youth in our community even better.

In 2014, the coalition helped to achieve some important outcomes for our community to protect youth from proposed policies that could have risked higher incidents of substance use by youth in our area. In particular, YC2 organized with other substance abuse prevention agencies to educate the public and our elected officials on proposed ordinances to decriminalize the cultivation of marijuana and to raise the legal age of purchase for tobacco and e-cigarettes. Our coordinated efforts were significant in defeating the proposed marijuana ordinances and in enacting laws to raise the legal age to purchase tobacco and e-cigarettes in Columbia.

In addition to our activism with respect to local laws, the coalition also organized or participated in numerous other initiatives to prevent substance use and abuse in our communities. Specifically, YC2 helped organized the county Rx drug take back for our county, continued support of compliance checks for area restaurants and bars, sponsored activities to educate parents about the risks of social hosting, participated in health fairs at the local high schools, and worked with MU Wellness Resource Center to organize two Alcohol Summits attended by local businesses, higher education, agencies and individuals alike which assessed the most pertinent issues our community faces regarding alcohol use by youth and young adults.

Another way YC2 seeks to positively impact the youth community is with the afterschool and youth leadership programs the coalition sponsors with partner organizations. As a 21st Century Community Learning Center grant recipient, YC2 works with four afterschool sites to provide quality after school programs that are helping to improve academic success for nearly 300 youth in Columbia. The Teen Outreach Program (TOP) is a leadership training program that works with at-risk high school teens providing education, leadership and community service training. Similarly, Helping Our Peers Everywhere (HOPE) is a peer leadership program working with high school teens on prevention of substance abuse, bullying and other teen issues with the intention of presenting the information learned to elementary, middle, and other high school students. Helping youth achieve greater success in school and in the community is an important pillar of the YC2 mission to ensure all our children develop into productive and self-sufficient citizens.

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ACT Missouri Blog

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Prevention Happened Here!

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National Drug Take Back Totals

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Prevention Wins Were Lean in 2019

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