JBS Honors National Substance Use Prevention Month
Join JBS in honoring National Substance Use Prevention Month, celebrated by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), an opportunity to spotlight the multitude of substance use prevention and harm reduction efforts going on across the country. These efforts aim to address the dual overdose and opioid crises that claimed the lives of 107,000+ Americans in 2023. Now is the time to tell the prevention story and to share how it is improving people’s lives.
Evidence-Base Prevention Strategies
The National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA), a federal research agency that studies substance use, notes that evidence-based approaches to prevent substance use are essential, especially for youth.1 Many studies note that substance use is most often initiated during adolescence. Efforts to prevent this use can be key to improving health outcomes for adults and reducing rates of substance use disorders in the future. For strategies to be effective, they should be specific and based on the people for whom they are being designed. Factors to consider when choosing a prevention strategy are settings, such as in the family, school, or community; age group, like youth-specific interventions; and other aspects of the population, including ethnic and racial identity, sex and gender, housing status, and geographic location.
The SAMHSA State Program Improvement Technical Assistance (State TA) Project at JBS delivers technical assistance efforts for organizations that receive SAMHSA funding through their state to provide mental health and substance use treatment services. Because each state has unique legislation, system infrastructure, needs, strengths, and challenges, we tailor TA needs and corresponding TA plans to each state’s circumstances.
Through the State TA project, JBS works with countless recovery community organizations, non-profits, and other community-based efforts in the United States that are committed to telling the important story of prevention. One such organization is ASAP of Anderson, a non-profit substance use prevention organization in Eastern Tennessee.
Kristi McCaleb, the Regional Overdose Prevention Specialist for ASAP of Anderson, shares:
“Communities play a vital role in protecting adolescents from early substance misuse. When we come together to do prevention, these community-level protective factors provide buffers to the challenging home lives of our students, poor school performance, early drop-out rates, and increased risks for other mental and physical health challenges. Together we can make a difference in the lives of many.”
The State TA project aims to connect with subject matter experts like McCaleb to share best practices with each other along a continuum of prevention, treatment, and recovery services.
Enhancing protective factors like family support, parental monitoring, social connectedness, school involvement, and family engagement, can all contribute to preventing high-risk substance use among youth and others and supporting holistic SUD recovery efforts.2 Another example of JBS work addressing SUD is its partnership with staff at the National Association of School Nurses to revamp the Naloxone Education for School Nurses toolkit. This toolkit, created as part of JBS’ NIDAMED contract, included presentations and trainings for school staff on naloxone and opioid overdose response in schools. Naloxone is a medicine that rapidly reverses opioid overdose, thereby preventing overdose death. The NIDAMED team continues to widely promote this resource to help combat overdoses and related deaths among adolescents.
National Prevention Policies and Tools
The Executive branch has also taken steps to strengthen prevention efforts. The White House recently released this year’s proclamation affirming October as National Youth Substance Use Prevention Month.3 The administration has announced advancements in providing support and resources for both mental health and substance use prevention in communities and schools thorough increased funding opportunities and grants. Other efforts from the White House include public education campaigns directed towards youth that highlight the dangers of illicit drugs like fentanyl.
Other Federal efforts to provide information and tools to SUD professionals and members of the public include the creation and dissemination of resourced by SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Treatment (CSAT), Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS), and Office of Recovery to promote prevention and related substance-use recovery for adolescents and young adults. The State TA team at JBS has supported the development of issue briefs on Black Youth Suicide Prevention and Best Practices for Authentic Youth Engagement in Service and Systems Advisory Groups and a Guidance Manual on Youth Recovery in Educational Settings.
Resources
Federal agencies share several resources in honor of National Substance Use Prevention Month:
SAMHSA’s Prevention Month toolkit: Includes a series of assets, including social media graphics, to help raise awareness of prevention efforts and activities during the month of October.
SAMHSA’s “Talk. They Hear You.”® campaign: Shares important information with parents and other caregivers on how to talk to youth about substance use and its risks.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s High-Risk Substance Use Among Youth: Includes statistics, information about risk factors and protective factors, and additional resources.
Youth.gov’s resources on Substance Use and Misuse: Provides a collection of health topics and resources.
References
1 National Institute on Drug Abuse. (n.d.). Prevention. National Institutes of Health. Retrieved October 1, 2024.
2 Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. (n.d.). High-risk substance use in youth. Retrieved October 1, 2024.
3 Biden, J. R. Jr. (2024, September 30). A proclamation on National Youth Substance Use Prevention Month, 2024. The White House.