County Receives Grant; Implements LST

Loudoun County has received a three-year foundation grant to continue its tobacco prevention programs.

The $112,010 will be used to support one part-time instructor to provide tobacco prevention programing to at-risk elementary, middle and high school-age youths.

Prevention and intervention staff will serve 150 at-risk youths ages 8 to 18 in grades 3 to 12. They will use the LifeSkills Training program, which focuses on changing children’s attitudes and norms about drug abuse.

Click here to view the full article

 

New Funding Website Launched by SAMHSA

Last week SAMHSA launched a new website dedicated to current information on funding for the treatment, prevention and intervention of substance abuse and mental health issues. The website will also feature archives of funding-related reports, pertinent news and much more information.

The Weekly Financing News Pulse includes a roundup of grant announcements, health funding news, details on Congressional hearings and analysis.

Using blog-style posts, the SAMHSA Financing COE website offers original COE content as well as news, reports, briefs, scholarly article citations, legislation, and data sets regarding the financing of M/SU treatment and prevention. Stay tuned for site updates coming soon.

Teen Drinkers Often Intend to Get Drunk, Survey Finds

Most teens are not regular drinkers, but those who do drink on a monthly basis are frequently imbibing in order to get drunk, according to a major finding of the 2009 Teen Survey released today from The National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse (CASA) at Columbia University.

About one in three U.S. 12- to 17-year-olds taking part in the National Survey of American Attitudes on Substance Abuse XIV said they had previously consumed alcohol, and of these about one in four said they had a drink within the previous 30 days. Among those who had used alcohol in their lifetime, 17 percent said they usually drank to get drunk, compared to 68 percent who said that getting intoxicated was not usually their intent.

However, one-third of teens who were monthly drinkers said that they typically drank to get drunk, and 65 percent said they had gotten drunk at least once during the past month. Further, about one-third of monthly drinkers who didn’t intend to get drunk wound up getting intoxicated, anyway, according to researchers.

Click here to view the full article and to downlad the report.

Funding Opportunity:Grant Announcement

The Middletown Substance Abuse Prevention Council, co-chaired by the city’s Youth Services Bureau and the Rushford Center, will offer a mini-grant program for drug prevention initiatives.

The grants provide a max funding level of $1,000 and may be used to support any substance prevention or youth development program in the community.

Additional information is available at www.middletownyouthservices.com or by calling Justin Carbonella, Youth Services coordinator, 860-347-8594, Ext. 4517

More dates added for Online Provider Training

LifeSkills Online Provider Trainings prepare you to effectively implement the education activities and teaching strategies found in the Botvin LifeSkills Training (LST) Middle School Program. Click here to view the schedule or to reserve your spot!

Why Train Online?

• Flexibility- This web-based application can be reached from home or any other Internet-accessible computer anytime.
• Convenience- Training online means you can learn without leaving the workplace; you can fit training around your workload.
• Cost- Online training is cost effective because it does away with any travel, lodging, and incidental expenses.

For more information, contact Wendy Armstrong at 1-800-293-4969 ext. 213 or email warmstrong@nhpamail.com

The Leader in Quality Prevention Education Training

Drug Free Communities Continuation Grantees Announced

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) this week awarded $60 million in Drug Free Communities (DFC) Continuation Grants to 565 DFC coalitions and five DFC Mentor Continuation coalitions. These grants will assist local community coalitions as they work to prevent and reduce youth substance use.

The Drug Free Communities program is directed by the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) in partnership with the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). The DFC program provides coalition matching grants of up to $625,000 over five years to community organizations that facilitate civic participation in local drug prevention efforts. Coalitions are comprised of community leaders, parents, youth, teachers, religious and fraternal organizations, health care and business professionals, law enforcement, and the media. As DFC continuation grantees, the new awardees are within a five-year cycle, and successfully met the statutory eligibility, programmatic and fiscal requirements necessary to receive continuation funding.

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy will be announcing the awarding of the new Drug Free Communities grantees in late August. For more information on the DFC Program, visit: www.ondcp.gov/dfc.

HHS’s SAMHSA Announces 12 Year Nationwide Drop in Tobacco Sales to Minors

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) recently announced that sales of tobacco to underage youth (those younger than age 18) have continued to decline, and have reached historic lows under the Synar Amendment program – a federal and state partnership program aimed at ending illegal tobacco sales to minors.

The Synar Amendment  requires states to have laws and enforcement programs for prohibiting the sale and distribution of tobacco to persons under age 18.

All 50 states and the District of Columbia have for the third year in a row achieved a major Synar program goal – a less than 20 percent non-compliance rate among tobacco product retailers.  This stands in sharp contrast with the situation 12 years ago at the Synar program’s inception when the highest reported non-compliance rate was 75 percent.

Reducing the illegal sales rate of tobacco to minors through enforcement of laws prohibiting the sale of tobacco products to minors is one of the specific tobacco objectives (objective 27-14) in Healthy People 2010, the nation’s disease prevention and health promotion goals and objectives for the decade.  FFY 2008 Annual Synar Reports: State Compliance, which includes compliance rates for each of the States and the District of Columbia, is available at http://prevention.samhsa.gov/tobacco/synarreportfy2008.pdf.

SAMHSA Provides New Information on How Grant Program Allotments are Calculated

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s (SAMHSA) Office Of Applied Studies (OAS) is issuing a new guide providing updated information on the procedures used by that office to calculate allocations for some of the key block  and formula grants the agency administers.  The grant programs addressed in this new guide entitled Block Grants and Formula Grants: A Guide for Allotment Calculations include:

• The Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Block Grant
• The Mental Health Services Block Grant
• Protection and Advocacy for Individuals with Mental Illness Formula Grant
• Projects for Assistance in Transition from Homelessness Formula Grant

The guide provides a non-technical overview of the new calculation procedures, detailed descriptions of the four sets of formulas, and the data used in the process. Flow charts and other background information are also provided to give a clearer overall understanding of the calculation procedures and how they affect these grant programs.

Copies of the guide can be obtained at http://oas.samhsa.gov/BG_documentation_070809_final_psg.pdf.

School Districts Transition from DARE, Implementing Top-rated LST Instead

Grapevine-Colleyville is the latest North Texas school district to drop out of the Drug Abuse Resistance Education (DARE) program, and if its exit is any indication, the pioneering anti-drug abuse program for students is not as popular as it once was in the region.

The district elected not to renew its junior-high DARE contract for the 2009-10 school year, district spokeswoman Megan Overman said, opting instead to extend its elementary-level LifeSkills program into the middle schools.

Other local districts have also dropped the DARE program over the past decade. Nationally, DARE’s critics have said the program is ineffective and even counterproductive by quoting high usage figures that make drugs seem like a route to popularity for at-risk kids who are seeking to fit in. Other critics say that it is difficult to authenticate DARE’s results and that its information has sometimes been inaccurate.

Read the full article here

CADCA Develops a Congressional Recess Guide

As you are likely aware, the full House, as well as the Senate Appropriations Committee have voted to eliminate the State Grants portion of the Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities (SDFSC) program. Although Congress is currently in recess, there is still time to weigh in with the members of your congressional delegation, as most of them will be spending extended periods of time in their home state and district offices. During this time, it is critical that your members hear from you about the importance of restoring funds to this program.

To that end, CADCA has developed a recess guide, designed to help you maximize your opportunities to weigh in with your congressional delegation; either by setting up appointments to meet directly with your members of Congress, or working with your local government to introduce a resolution in support of restoring funding to the State Grants portion of the SDFSC program, and presenting it to your federal representatives. 

Please click here to access the guide: Congressional Recess Guide: Opportunities to Weigh in on Safe and Drug Free Schools and Communities , or go to http://www.cadca.org/coalitionresources/pp-documents/SDFSC/SDFSC_Congressiona_Guide_During_August_Recess.doc.