Join us Friday, July 10th, at 10 a.m. for a conversation about race, equity, and the role of prevention with Kyle Strickland from the Kirwan Institute for the Study of Race and Ethnicity at The Ohio State University.

Registration is open for the July 1, 2020 virtual Ohio Prevention Conference!

In an effort to provide opportunities for training and continuing education, a variety of web-based offerings will be available throughout the summer and fall at no cost to attendees. Learn more about the different training opportunities and register to attend them at OSU’s website.

There’ll be conversations on reframing prevention with evidence-based communications, preventing alcohol use by adolescents, fostering emotional and behavioral health for children, preventing suicide in Ohio, and more.

The Ohio Youth-Led Prevention Network is accepting applications for the 2020-2021 Youth Council (YC). In addition to the annual We Are The Majority Rally, the Youth Council plans and implements prevention activities related to their strategic plan. The 2019-2020 YC built a Vaping Prevention Education Toolkit that is nearly ready to be revealed. YC originally expected to work with youth-led groups this fall to use the toolkit in their communities, but the plan may change due to COVID-19 and YC priorities.

To learn how youth can bring their advocacy efforts to the state level, check out our application here. You can also download a preview of the application here. We expect that COVID-19 will continue to influence the way youth-led programs meet and work together, and so next year's YC will look a little different than it has in the past few years. Working together, though, we can still support other young people in the state and figure out the best way to move forward despite the challenges ahead.

The beginning of the next fiscal year is here, which means it's time for members of the Statewide Prevention Coalition Association to renew their membership. However, in light of current events and in an effort to grow coalition capacity across Ohio, we'll be waiving all membership fees for the upcoming fiscal year, which runs from July 1st to June 30th. Whether you're a current SPCA member or want to become one, now you can get one year of membership for free.

The first phase of solving a complex problem like underage drinking is to identify that problem’s scope and its various parts. To effectively prevent underage drinking, you have to assess your community’s behaviors and attitudes towards underage drinking. How do parents feel about underage drinking in their community? Are they aware of how large a problem it is? Do they know how youth get alcohol? Do they know what drinks kids are drinking and where kids are partying? Are they aware of your community’s laws regarding social hosting?

The Parent Survey on Underage Alcohol Use is just one of the many tools in the Parents Who Host Implementation Guide. It’s best used before and after your campaign to provide pre- and post-intervention data to help you watch how attitudes and behaviors change over time. It can even be used for several years consecutively to give you a comprehensive overview of community attitudes. It’s easy to distribute, and it takes only minutes for parents in your community to fill out the survey.

We're dedicated to our mission of leading healthy communities in the prevention of substance misuse and the promotion of mental health wellness. To that end, we've created fact sheets and infographics that you can use and share to educate your community about prevention. These fact sheets work well in print and online.

We've created resources on the following topics:

Whether youth are on social media, listening to music, or streaming their favorite shows, they’re likely hearing highly influential celebrities voice their opinions on racism in America. And they’re probably hearing terms that they find confusing.

As parents, it’s our role to have conversations with our teens about racism, and we have to help them make sense of the messages they’re receiving. To help you have that conversation, we created this Know! Parent Tip that has terms you and your teen may hear and need to know.

Questions? Comments? Suggestions?