The Oregon Partnership, Inc.
Portland, Oregon

The Oregon Partnership collaborates with community coalitions, schools, businesses, health care providers, and religious organizations on drug and alcohol prevention projects, public awareness campaigns, and treatment referral through several youth-oriented services. The Too Smart To Start team will sponsor a school-based program for youth and parents and hold awareness-raising activities in the community.

At a local elementary school, the team will convey prevention messages through YouthLink, an interactive multimedia prevention education program that educates and engages youth in discussions about the harms of underage alcohol use. Parents will be involved in educating youth about the harms of underage alcohol use by serving as mentors and as educators in the Parents Teaching Prevention program, in which parents teach alcohol use prevention in the classroom. The team will also create a parent network to support parents’ efforts to talk to their children about alcohol use and other issues. Finally, the team will organize educational sessions to provide parents with information about the harms of underage alcohol use and teach them how to communicate effectively with their children about alcohol.

To increase underage alcohol use disapproval within the community, the team will help plan and publicize awareness-raising messages developed by 9- to 13-year-olds and their parents. Youth and parents will create messages and help plan their placement throughout the community, in venues including local newspapers, radio stations, billboards, movie theater ads, local buses, and school and community newsletters. The team will work with the local TV and print media and also encourage parents and youth to write opinion pieces and letters to the editor for publication in local papers.