Develop Action Plan

After 4 months of collecting the necessary information to have a complete picture of the underage drinking problems in their community, the parents decided that they were ready to take action. The first step the Danyaville Parents Advocating Prevention (DPAP) initiated was to develop a specific action plan that would allow them to achieve their goals. After reviewing some documents on strategies for addressing underage drinking, including Environmental Strategies for Prevention Substance Use Among Youth: A Resource Guide of Best Practices, and analyzing their community assessment, they decided that they should approach the problem from two angles. First and foremost, the community needed to find ways to prevent youth access to alcohol. Through their research, the parents learned that compliance checks are one part of a comprehensive strategy to reduce underage drinking. Given their discussions with the chief of police, they knew how concerned the police department was about the problem. The chief expressed that the department had a desire and commitment to address the problem. However, funding was not currently available to conduct compliance checks. After several coalition meetings, the DPAP reached a consensus that the first strategy would be to increase the number of compliance checks for underage alcohol purchases. The group developed an action plan and stated that its overall goal was to increase law enforcement efforts to reduce or prevent underage drinking. The first objective would be to institutionalize the use of compliance checks in Danyaville to prevent youth access to alcohol. In the action plan, each objective had a set of key activities, the timeline for completing those steps, and the primary group responsible for each activity. The parents divided themselves into subcommittees so each group could focus on the specific tasks for each objective.

The parents decided that a key component of their action plans should be increasing the community’s awareness about the problem and the potential policy solutions. They incorporated a media advocacy section as part of the action plan to help them achieve their overall goal. Using the community data, DPAP members began to develop a specific message to be used as part of a media advocacy campaign. “Communities and Youth, Working Together to Limit Alcohol Access” was coined as the tagline, and a local advertising firm interested in the efforts of the coalition volunteered to collaborate with the DPAP to implement the campaign.

However, even the most minimal of prevention efforts requires capital, and the DPAP’s only influx of funding came from community contributions. As the coalition grew, resources such as office space and printing equipment and materials needed to be acquired. With the assistance of the Danyaville Community Resource Center, specifically the organization’s lead grant writer, the coalition applied for funding from the Drug-Free Communities Program (http://ojjdp.ncjrs.org/dfcs/). This program enables coalitions interested in combating substance use issues to further expand and strengthen their current program. As they awaited funding results, the parents took steps to develop an overall strategic plan for their coalition. Included in this plan was the organizational structure of the DPAP, strategies to mobilize the community, and approaches to recruit and train coalition members.

In the meantime, the parents worried that parties where binge drinking occurred would continue and teens would drive while intoxicated. The parents agreed that the police needed to find a way to contain the teens once they were called to the scene so they could provide the proper citations and prevent driving under the influence. As a secondary objective, the DPAP reached the conclusion that the Danyaville Police Department needed additional training on dispersing underage drinking parties. They added this second objective to their action plan and began to research further funding mechanisms.