The Roots
Mental Health
By understanding and focusing on mental health in youth we can give them coping skills to use throughout their life. Trauma Informed Care is one training that is offered to help providers understand the impact of trauma on substance use disorders and how being trauma informed has the potential to reduce high risk behaviors.
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Family
Family is the foundation for youth-
we work to provide community resources for parents to develop and strengthen their parenting skills.
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Risk/Protective Factors
There are certain risk factors that have been identified to increase the likelihood of high-risk behavior. There are also certain protective factors that can reduce the likelihood of high-risk behavior including substance abuse. The Nebraska Risk and Protective Factor Student Survey is what we, as a community team, use to guide our work to help limit risk factors, and increase protective factors.
Access
We work to identify areas in which youth have access to alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, then educate the community on how to limit access. Strategies to limit access include alcohol and tobacco compliance checks. We provide TIPS responsible beverage server training to help empower servers to confidently refuse sales to minors and intoxicated adults.
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Policy
By affecting policy in regards to alcohol, tobacco nd other drugs we can affect change over long periods of time. One example is The Clean Indoor Air Act which significantly lowered tobacco use in Nebraska.
Norms
The norms developed by families and communities affect how an individual perceives the risks of substance use. We, as a community team, work to challenge social norms that make underage, high-risk, or binge drinking appear "norm al." We also challenge social norms surrounding tobacco and other drugs including but not limited to marijuana and misuse of prescription drugs.
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Education
Education is a starting point for all of prevention work. First we must identify that there is a problem and help our community to see and understand the problem before we can work towards a common solution.