Addressing underage drinking in cape girardeau county - epic works to build a healthy and safe community, reducing the risks of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs while promoting the healthy attitudes…

Addressing underage drinking in cape girardeau county - epic works to build a healthy and safe community, reducing the risks of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs while promoting the healthy attitudes and behaviors of youth in southeast missouri. Over the next four years epic will specifically target underage drinking with a plan to 1) build on our epic designation project, which already includes epic schools by finalizing the new epic business project and 2) partner with a local university student club who will serve in an advisory capacity to establish a campus-wide organization, work for policy change, and help organize a social norming campaign on campus and the community at large. The predominant culture in our county embraces alcohol use as a societal norm which contributes to high rates of use among young people. Specific local conditions contributing to this problem include cape girardeau being home to southeast missouri state university (SEMO) and a conservative, business friendly community with elected officials who often consider alcohol and tobacco prevention to be at odds with business. Epic has designed and implemented the successful epic schools project where schools put in place polices that help prevent youth substance abuse. Policy requirements are established by epic in order to get the official "epic" designation and those awarded the designation are then recognized in local media outlets. The schools must develop strong policies and practices to prevent youth alcohol abuse on their campuses. To further our efforts in the community we will finalize the development of the epic business project where local businesses that sell alcohol can become "epic" when they meet requirements such as alcohol sales compliance, responsible beverage service training and up-to-date technological scanning of identification cards. Epic will also join with the psychology club at SEMO who will serve as an advisory group to help establish an organization on campus that will hold alcohol-free events, change policy surrounding the new rule that allows alcohol in the dorms, and establish and implement a positive community norming campaign on the SEMO campus addressing underage drinking that exists on campus and in the community at large. We expect to reach as many as 30,000 people by projects end. More specifically epic plans to work to reduce underage drinking in the community by increasing the age of first use and perception of harm of alcohol as measured by search institute's developmental asset profile (DAP) and to decrease perception of availability of alcohol by changing perceptions of local high school students also as measured by the search institute's DAP, the missouri student survey and as measured in focus groups. Our target population is cape girardeau county youth age 12 to 20. We anticipate that will reach at a minimum, 1000 students each year. Media exposure of these community efforts will change social norms as people begin to realize that the norm in our community among businesses, organizations and schools is to support a healthy community and prevent unhealthy, high-risk behaviors like underage drinking.