Southwestern Public Health is partnering up with the community to prevent youth substance use.
Elgin-St. Thomas and Oxford County will be forming two local coalitions to adopt the Icelandic Prevention model.
The global initiative called Planet Youth is a data-driven model that was developed in Iceland in the early 90’s in order to understand which factors influence youth substance use to inform communities on where to focus efforts to effectively lower substance use rates.
“Planet Youth itself is a shift in the way we would look at substance use prevention, where we focus at the different environments that influence, so what happens outside of school in the community, what are the different things that youth that are involved with that could potentially put them at risk of substance use,” says Jessica Austin, Chair of Planet Youth Elgin-St. Thomas.
Austin says the topic is very complex and they want to do more than just individual education.
From Nov. 24, to Dec. 5, local high school students are invited to participate in a survey to help identify risks related to substance use, school boards sent out consent forms to families of Grade 9 and 10 students to encourage participation in the upcoming survey.
“There is an opportunity for youth to have a voice, it gives them a platform to talk about it in a way that then we come together and they might see and hear themselves in the reports and results and be able to have more openness, this is an opportunity for us to be more transparent about what is actually happening in our communities,” says Austin.
Austin urges parents in the Elgin-St. Thomas and in Oxford County areas to sign their consent forms so students can participate in the survey to properly have a conversation about youth substance use.
