What is Environmental Prevention?
When dealing with underage and high risk drinking, traditional prevention strategies tend to focus on changing the individual and the individual’s behavior. Young people are taught in school about the dangers of alcohol and drug use and when one runs into issues with substance abuse, counseling and other treatment programs are offered or mandated. Over the past decade, many communities have begun turning to environmental prevention strategies to address underage and high risk drinking.
Environmental prevention strategies concentrate on changing community conditions that increase the risk for underage and high risk drinking (Center for Applied Research Solutions, 2006).
There are five main components to environmental prevention:
- Data collection and analysis (to assess a community’s needs)
- Community organizing (building community coalitions to effectively address the problem)
- Media advocacy (the use of media to educate the community and to provide a call to action to change the problem)
- Policy change (using public policy to change specific environments that create risky behaviors)
- Enforcement of laws relating to alcohol (including the enforcement of underage drinking laws)
The Sonoma Valley Coalition to Prevent Underage Drinking is using environmental prevention strategies to reduce underage drinking by focusing on where Sonoma Valley youth access alcohol and where they drink it at. In a 2008 survey of Sonoma Valley youth, the Coalition found that youth were most likely to access alcohol in retail settings by stealing, purchasing, or shoulder tapping. Shoulder tapping refers to a young person approaching a stranger outside a store and asking them to buy alcohol for them. In the same survey, youth reported consuming alcohol at house parties and at a place commonly known as “the Plat.”
To address underage access to alcohol in retail settings:
The Coalition has collaborated with the Sonoma Police Department to provide Responsible Beverage Service/Sales (RBS) training to merchants who serve and/or sell alcohol in the Sonoma Valley. The Coalition will continue to work with the police department on this issue.
To address underage consumption of alcohol in social settings:
The Coalition has implemented a Parent and Community Pledge Campaign to educate both parents and the community at large on the risks associated with underage drinking and tips on how parents can prevent underage access to alcohol in their own homes. The Coalition has also engaged in policy change by working in collaboration with the police department in writing the Social Host Ordinance.
