The Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation (PIRE) was awarded a grant from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) entitled “Albuquerque-Bernalillo County Youth Underage Drinking & RX Opioid Misuse Prevention Partnership (ABC Prevent),” PIRE partners with the Bernalillo County Community Health Council (BCCHC) in this coalition-driven project to evaluate and implement, evidence-based strategies to address community-level contributing factors in the misuse of alcohol and opioids while addressing health disparities Bernalillo county.
ABC Prevent directly and indirectly serves all Bernalillo County, New Mexico residents, with a focus on youth, young adults, and parents, aged 9-40, through interventions that are rooted in building community capacity for prevention through culturally responsive application of the Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF). Strategies to address underage drinking center on the generation of community support for effective and equitable enforcement of underage drinking laws, and policy change to address ease of access to alcohol, high alcohol outlet density and low alcohol prices.
To reduce access to prescription opioids for misuse, ABC Prevent works directly with youth, parents and medical providers. Through academic detailing supported by community specific educational materials, medical providers will be engaged in responsible prescribing practices and educating their patients about opioid harms. Community-based participatory research methods will be used to engage youth, parents and other key sub-populations disparately impacted by misuse to develop and design strategic campaigns to prevent alcohol and opioid misuse in their own community.
This partnership between community health promotion (BCCHC) and prevention research (PIRE) will assure the capacity required to support the strategic and effective application of strategies in a way that is responsive to evolving community needs. Our three goals are to: (1) utilize SPF to build capacity of the BCCHC to grow sustainable community campaigns/initiatives to reduce underage drinking and prescription painkiller misuse among Bernalillo county youth; (2) decrease under-age drinking by Bernalillo county youth (ages 9-20) through a guided technical assistance approach to engage the coalition base to support the effective implementation of evidence-based environmental interventions; (3) decrease prescription painkiller misuse among Bernalillo county youth and young adults (ages 12-25) by implementing programming to reduce dangerous/risky opioid prescribing practices and to build community campaigns to reduce access to opioids from parents and guardians.
For more information about the project, contact the PIRE Principal Investigator, Liz Lilliott-González, Ph.D. at lilliott@pire.org.
Funded by: SAMHSA Grant #6H79SP081613
For more information about BCCHC: http://www.bchealthcouncil.org/
