Health Promotion Program to Prevent Drug Use and Abuse among Bankstowns Youths - Case Study Example

Proposal on the Prevention of Drug Use and Abuse among Bankstown’s Youths Student’s Name Institution Prevention of Drug Use and Abuse among Bankstown’s Youths Introduction Drug abuse among youths is a common health problem in most regions in Australia. Bankstwon, Sydney is one of such major towns in Australia that experience serious cases of drug abuse among their youthful residents. Without knowing it, most of the youths face great health risks as a result of abusing drugs. Some of the health problems that affect the youths who abuse drugs include: drug paraphernalia, poor hygiene, depression, and other mental health risks. As a result of the negative effects drug abuse has on Bankstwon’s youths, including health problems, poor academic performance, and involvement in crime, it is important to develop a program that will help in dealing with the issue. The problem can be prevented through various initiatives such as drug abuse prevention campaigns and education on the issue. Consequently, this paper proposes the use of drug abuse campaigns and education as ways of preventing or reducing drug abuse among Bankstown’s youths to promote their health. To address all the major aspects about the proposed health promotion program, the paper is divided into various sections, including: the various facts about drug abuse and the aspects that require to be changed, the proposed objectives of the project, the strategic plan for implementing the project, details about the intended project, and the resources required to implement the project. Facts about Drug Abuse and Issues That Require to Be Changed The main facts and issues concerning drug abuse among the youths of Bankstown include the factors that push them to abuse drugs, the type of drugs they abuse, and the consequences of their use. There are three main causes of drug abuse among the youths who live in Bankstown: stress, low self-esteem, self-medication, and easy access. Stress has been found to be the number one reason for drug abuse among the youths in the town (Ruiz, Strain, & Lowinson, 2011). Although most people, including their parents, do not see it, many youths in the town experience stress and depression, which are caused by factors such as poor academic performance and relationship heart-breaks. Most youth resort to abusing drugs as a means of alleviating the stress they are going through (Abadinsky, 2013). Low self-esteem is another reason that motivates the youth in Bankstown to abuse drugs. Youths with low-self esteem usually fail to see their inner value and often feel unworthy or unwanted in society. Such youths start using drugs such as alcohol and cocaine to boost their self-esteem and give them the confidence they need to associate with peers (Wilson & Kolander, 2011). Self-medication has also been cited as a major factor that pushes youths in Bankstown to abuse drugs. Young people, especially teenagers, encounter numerous challenges in life as they transit from childhood to adulthood. In some cases, the challenges lead to anxiety or even depression. In an attempt to control such mental or mood disorders, some youths resort to using hard drugs such as cocaine and marijuana without understanding their effects (Anderson, 2011; Levesque, 2011). With the easy access and continuous usage of drug abuse in Bankstown, the youths are exposed to risk of suffering from a number of health problems. Firstly, the young people who abuse drugs may suffer from emotional problems such as depression, anxiety, schizophrenia, suicidal thoughts, and mood swings (Hornik, Jacobsohn, Orwin, Piesse, & Kalton, 2008). Research shows that more than 30% of the youth who suffer from major depression and anxiety disorders use hard drugs. Consequently, the youth in the town who use hard drugs also increase their chances of developing depression, anxiety, and other emotional problems (Wechsler & Nelson, 2008). Secondly, the youth members who abuse drugs are likely to suffer from brain damage and other mental disorders. Most of the hard drugs they abuse are known to cause a prolonged and sometimes permanent brain damage, which ultimately leads to brain malfunctioning. In the case of brain damage, the victim is likely to suffer from memory loss and amnesia, perception and intuition problems, impaired reasoning, and socialization issues (Wakefield, Loken, & Hornik, 2010). Lastly, drug abuse can lead to behavioural and physical problems among the youths who abuse drugs for a long time. The young people who abuse less potent drugs are more likely than those who do not to use hard drugs and engage in violent and delinquent behaviour (Rosner, 2013; Lynskey & Argrawal, 2007)). The drug addicts are also more likely to engage in irresponsible sexual behaviour, which exposes them to sexually transmitted infections and teenage pregnancies (Bardo, Fishbein, & Milich, 2011). Apart from the causes and consequences, the project will also target the drugs that are mostly abused by the youth. According to research, the drugs that the youths in Bankstown abuse more frequently include alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and heroin, and cigarettes (Ponsford, Whelan-Goodinson, & Bahar-Fuchs, 2007). Alcohol and cigarettes are readily available in pubs, clubs, and shops, and can be sold to the young people over the counter provided they have reached the age of majority. Cocaine, heroin and marijuana, though illegal and less accessible, still find their way into the hands of young people (Botvin & Griffin, 2007). The project will target these drugs to find ways of restricting or barring their accessibility by the youths, especially students. Proposed Objectives of the Project The proposed anti youth drug-abuse campaign project is intended to achieve a number of objectives. Firstly, the project is intended to work together with health professionals, parents, teachers, care givers, and any other person who works with young people to help them shun illegal drugs and the irresponsible use of tobacco and alcohol. Prevention of tobacco, alcohol, and drug-use among the youth can be more successful if parents and professionals working with young people are involved in the campaign project (Verster, 2012). The project will also require the provision of sufficient information about drug abuse to the youth and involvement of parents, professionals, and other stakeholders. Secondly, the project is intended to advocate for zero tolerance laws and regulations for the youth regarding the use of alcohol, tobacco, and other illegal drugs within schools, workplaces, the family setting, and the community. It is believed that youths are likely to desist from using these drugs if policies discouraging their sale and use are enacted and implemented throughout the society (Czyzewska & Ginsburg, 2007; Monti, 2012). This is also evident by the prevention programs that have so far been implemented in schools, which have seen cases of drug abuse in learning institutions reduce significantly (Hunt, Moloney, & Evans, 2010). For that reason, the proposed project will campaign for the implementation of zero tolerance policies against drug use in learning institutions and places where young people spend most of their time. Thirdly, the project will push for thorough advertising and public communication sessions on the media explaining to the youth the side effects of using illegal drugs, tobacco, and alcohol (Martins, Storr, Alexandre, & Chilcoat, 2008). According to Sussman and Ames (2008) anti-drug messages passed through various media and other communication modes are effective in encouraging youths to stay away from illegal drugs. The campaign will work together with various media and entertainment companies and other willing organizations to pass anti-drug messages to the youths in Bankstown. The project also intends to provide youths, especially those in high school and universities, with information on tobacco, alcohol, and other illegal drug prevention policies and other successful programs. The state and local governments of Sydney will be asked to avail the policies and programs, which will then be taught to the youth. It is expected that the policies and programs are likely to persuade the youths to stay away from drugs. Another objective of the proposed project is to promote and help in the development of Bankstown’s coalitions and programs discouraging drug-abuse and underage tobacco smoking and alcohol consumption. Communities in the region are appropriate places of forming public-private associations that can be relied on to influence the attitude of the youths in Bankstown towards alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs. The project will advocate for the formation of more such coalitions to help in discouraging youths from getting involved in drug abuse. Lastly, the project will aim at supporting parents and other stakeholders to encourage the youths, especially college students, to engage in acceptable and desired healthy behaviours and lifestyles so that they can become role models to their peers and siblings. Youths, especially teens, only listen to the people they love and adore (Cho & Boster, 2008). Parents and other role models should be provided with the various resources needed for the anti-drug campaigns, as they can help the project in terms of reaching the targeted group: the youth. Strategic Plan for Implementing the Project The implementation plan for the proposed project will include a number of organizations and stakeholders; it will also utilize several approaches to achieve the best results. Firstly, the project will engage parents and teachers and train them on how to help teens stay away from drugs. Parents have a significant influence on their children, especially those aged between 8 and 14 years. The project will encourage parents to begin talking to their children at this tender age to ensure they do not fall victim to peer influence at a later stage. It has been proven that parents who wait until their children have started engaging in drugs rarely succeed in guiding them to stop the habit (Snyder, 2007; Palmgreen, Lorch, Stephenson, Hoyle, & Donohew, 2007). That is why this project will target children as young as 8 years to ensure they stay away from drugs and know their undesirable effects before they can even experiment with them. Apart from parents, teachers, youth workers, coaches, church leaders, and extended family members will also be included in the project to help talk with the youth on drug usage and abuse, as they are always in contact with the target group. These individuals, especially teachers and church leaders, can protect the youth against drug use and abuse and train parents on the best ways of bringing up their children. Teachers and church leaders have significant influence on children and can help them stay away from illegal substances even if their parents are drug addicts (Miller, Naimi, Brewer, & Jones, 2007; Fletcher, Bonell, & Hargreaves, 2008). These groups will be provided with further training on how to handle children whose parents are drug addicts. Apart from training and involving parents and teachers in the campaign, the project will also design ways of ensuring that learning institutions and communities within Bankstown remain safe and drug-free. The project will require the Sydney Department of Education to increase the funds allocated to schools in Bankstown to help them create and maintain safe environments for learning. The additional funds will help schools in the region to develop and implement policies against drug abuse and violence; parents and teachers will work together to ensure that alcohol, tobacco, and other illegal drugs remain out of bounds within the school. To ensure drug-free learning institutions, the project will push for the formation of a new body “The New Drug Prevention and School Safety Program”, which will help Bankstown’s school coordinators to recruit, train and hire drug and violence prevention experts in learning institutions, all the way from middle school to the university level. The experts will be tasked with the identification, development, and implementation of promising drug prevention programs and techniques in schools. The experts will also be required to collaborate with communities to help them develop programs and strategies like the ones in social places such as churches. The third phase in the implementation process will involve media and entertainment companies. The promotion will be named “Bankstown Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign” and will hire the services of media and entertainment industries in the region. The anti-drug media campaign will employ the full power of the media in the region to educate and enable Bankstown’s youths to desist from engaging with alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs. The messages conveyed through the media will be targeted at discouraging drug use and encouraging addicts and short-term users to quit substance abuse. The media campaign will focus on primary drug use and abuse prevention, which implies that the strategy will be targeted at stopping the vice before it occurs. For that reason, the campaign will target mostly the factors that lure the youths into abusing drugs; consequently, it is an effective way for reducing the extent of the problem. With time, the primary prevention campaign will go down, calling for the establishment of a well equipped drug use and addiction treatment facility, which is yet to be launched in the town. In a bid to ensure the complete prevention of drug use, the campaign will also work towards influencing the attitudes of the youths who have never experimented with drugs to help them stay away from them; such youths can also be used to influence their friends engaging in drug abuse to quit the vice. In addition, the implementation process will include pushing for child welfare and reform programs in the entire Bankstown to ensure that children in primary and secondary schools are well protected from drug-abuse. It has been pointed in several studies that there is a strong correlation between child abuse and drug dependence; the vice jeopardizes the safety of children and the well-being of their families (Molnar, Cerda, Roberts, & Buka, 2007; Sheehan & Borowski, 2013). Other studies have found out that close to 70% of the children under foster care in Bankstown have drug-addicted parents or close relatives who use illegal substances (Grucza, Noberg, & Bierut, 2009). Through the reformation of child welfare in the region, these issues can be effectively addressed. The child welfare information will also be designed in such a way that it takes into account factors caused by drug dependence on parents. For instance, it is known that drug addiction and dependence can easily ruin the parents’ ability to acquire and maintain employment, which, in turn, impairs their capacity to take care of their children. These situations should be addressed by establishing the relevant welfare programs in the town, as the current one rarely handles such situations. Consequently, this project will ensure that the welfare programs in the region are reformed in such a way that they can deal with drug-abuse issues by identifying them, treating them, and making referrals where necessary. Lastly, the project will work with the relevant authorities to set up mentoring programs in learning institutions and other social settings in the entire town to ensure that the youths in the region can easily access mentoring services. The mentoring program will focus on the various problems that the youths in the region face, including drug abuse, child neglect, poverty, and negative peer influence. The implementation of the program will include recruiting, hiring and training adult mentors and posting them to various learning institutions and other areas where mentoring programs and facilities will be situated. The mentors will be required to counsel the youths on drug abuse and its consequences and how to stay away from illegal substances in their respective stations. The Project: Youth Drug-Abuse Prevention Campaign The proposed project will be about preventing or influencing Bankstown’s youths to stay away from engaging in tobacco, alcohol, and illegal drugs to promote their health, academic performance, and general well-being. The project will be mainly based on the philosophy that the simplest and most cost-effective way to minimize economic and societal expenses of drug abuse is to prevent the youths from engaging in drugs. As has been pointed out by several studies, drug abuse has caused serious problems in Bankstown, including school drop-outs, accidents, damaged relationships, delinquency and unlawful acts, violence, loss of employment, and impaired judgment, often leading to endless fights and violence. The proposed project will seek to initiate programs of preventing the youths in Bankstown from using alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs in an attempt to prevent more cases of drug abuse and the problems the vice has brought to the region. The project will direct most of its strategies and efforts to prevention of drug use and abuse among vulnerable youngsters in the town. Various studies point out that the fight against drug use and abuse is more successful if directed at susceptible youths. Youths, especially teenagers, are considered the most susceptible to alcohol abuse and use of illicit drugs (Petrie, Bunn, & Byrne, 2007: Sargent, Tanski, Stoolmiller, & Hanewinkel, 2010). It is essential to delay or prevent potential users of alcohol, tobacco, and illicit drugs from trying them before they get influenced by their peers. It has also been proven that people who do not get to experiment with drugs during adolescent stage are less likely to develop drug-dependency problems at later stages in life (Hanson, Venturelli, & Fleckenstein, 2012). This is why the project will focus mostly on children, teens, and youths in their early 20s for the best campaign results. The project will help the relevant authorities in Bankstown to implement various strategies that will ensure the youths in the region stay away from or quit using drugs. However, it is good to reinforce that the proposed strategies are not vaccinations that can immunize youths against drug abuse; they are simply meant to dissuade the youths from engaging in the vice. However, it is expected that the project will yield desirable results by ensuring a significant proportion of the youths in the region stay away from alcohol, tobacco, and illegal drugs. Resources Required for the Project The project will require about $150,000 to implement the strategies it will propose. The largest part of the money, about $100,000, will be obtained from the Department of Education and the Department of Public Health in Sydney. The remaining amount will be collected from non-governmental organizations, media and entertainment associations, and well-wishers. Schools and community organizations will also be required to provide any necessary support they can afford. The resources will be used economically and efficiently to ensure that the proposed project becomes a success. Most of the resources will be directed to helping schools, churches, and other social settings to implement the proposed strategies for the prevention of drug use and abuse. The remaining part of the money will be used in paying media companies to convey the anti-drug messages. Conclusion The proposed project will address the problem of drug abuse among the youths in Bankstown and develop and implement strategies that can be relied on in preventing the problem. Drug abuse has been found to be a common health problem in Bankstown, as it causes mental disorders, and other health-related problems to the youths who engage in the vice. It is believed that by initiating a project that seeks to prevent drug abuse in the town, the initiation will promote the health of the youth in the town and in the entire region. The project will involve working together with parents, teachers, church leaders, and other relevant stakeholders to ensure that the strategies developed are successfully implemented. The project will focus mostly on mechanisms for preventing drug abuse as opposed to waiting to treat the problem after it has happened. The project will obtain most of its funding from the Department of Education and Department of Health in Sydney to implement the proposed drug use prevention strategies aimed at the youth of Bankstown. References Abadinsky, H. (2013). Drug use and abuse: A comprehensive introduction. Belmont: CA Wadsworth. Anderson, T. L. (2011). Sex, drugs, and death: Addressing youth problems in American society. New York, NY: Taylor and Francis. Bardo, M. T., Fishbein, D. H., & Milich, R. (2011). Inhibitory control and drug abuse prevention: From research to translation. New York, NY: Springer. Botvin, G. J., & Griffin, K. W. (2007). School-based programs to prevent alcohol, tobacco and other drug use. International Review of Psychiatry, 19(6), 607-615. Cho, H., & Boster, F. J. (2008). First and third person perceptions on anti-drug ads among adolescents. Communication Research, 35(2), 169-189. Czyzewska, M., & Ginsburg, H. J. (2007). Explicit and implicit effects of anti-marijuana and anti-tobacco TV advertisements. Addictive Behaviours, 32(1), 114-127. Fletcher, A., Bonell, C., & Hargreaves, J. (2008). School effects on young people’s drug use: A systematic review of intervention and observational studies. Journal of Adolescent Health, 42(3), 209-220. Grucza, R. A., Noberg, K. E., & Bierut, L. (2009). Binge drinking among youths and young adults in the United States: 1979-2006. Journal of the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, 48(7), 692-702. Hanson, G., Venturelli, P. J., & Fleckenstein, A. E. (2012). Drugs and society. Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett Learning. Hornik, R., Jacobsohn, L., Orwin, R., Piesse, A., & Kalton, G. (2008). Effects of the national youth anti-drug media campaign on youths. American Journal of Public Health, 98(12), 2229-2236. Hunt, G., Moloney, M., & Evans, K. (2010). Youth, drugs, and night life. New York, NY: Routledge. Levesque, R. J. R. (2011). Encyclopaedia of adolescence. New York, NY: Springer. Lynskey, M. T., & Argrawal, A. (2007). Psychometric properties of DSM assessments of illicit drug abuse and dependence: Results from the National Epidemiologic Survey on Alcohol and Related Conditions (NESARC). Psychological Medicine, 37(9), 1345-1355. Martins, S. S., Storr, C. L., Alexandre, P. K., & Chilcoat, H. D. (2008). Adolescent ecstasy and other drug use in the National Survey of Parents and Youths: The role of sensation- seeking, parental monitoring and peer’s drug use. Addictive Behaviours, 33(7), 919-933. Miller, J. W., Naimi, T. S., Brewer, R. D., & Jones, S. E. (2007). Binge drinking and associated health risk behaviours among high school students. Pediatrics, 119(1), 76-85. Molnar, B. E., Cerda, M., Roberts, A. L., & Buka, S. L. (2007). Effects of neighbourhood resources on aggressive and delinquent behaviours among urban youths. American Journal of Public Health, 98(6), 1086-1093. Monti, P. (2012). Adolescents, alcohol, and substance abuse: Reaching teens through brief interventions. New York, NY: Guilford Publications. Palmgreen, P., Lorch, E. P., Stephenson, M. T., Hoyle, R. H., & Donohew, L. (2007). Effects of the Office of National Drug Control Policy’s Marijuana Initiative Campaign on high sensation-seeking adolescents. American Journal of Public Health, 97(9), 1644-1649. Petrie, J., Bunn, F., & Byrne, G. (2007). Parenting programs for preventing tobacco, alcohol or drugs misuse in children Read More