Marin County News

February 2006

Marin County Makes History: Rejecting Alcohol Sponsorship

Marin County, California, recently broke new ground by passing an historic ordinance banning alcohol sponsorship at the County Fair. The Marin County Board of Supervisors unanimously approved the proposal in February 2006-making it the first known ordinance of its kind in California, and possibly the nation. View the full story.

June 2005

Youth Perspective: It's Easy for Kids to Get Alcohol and Other Drugs

by Thomas Lawn, age 17
Marin Youth Health Advisory Council

All across the country, and particularly in Marin County, it's easy for young people to get alcohol. With fake IDs, older friends, relaxed parents, and an increasing willingness to steal-not to mention that most teens know the worst part of getting caught is only six months of supervised sobriety-kids are becoming more interested, and involved, in alcohol and other drugs. This is no longer just an upperclassman scene; seventh grade kids are stealing alcohol and drinking it on bike paths and at school. Moreover, parks and other public places are littered with cigarette butts, Ziploc baggies, and empty alcohol containers.

It would be different if the drug and alcohol culture in Marin wasn't acceptable; however, it's often a big part of teen life and a major topic of conversation. I'm not the only one who's noticed this. It's quite possible kids have nothing else to talk about other than alcohol, parties, and stories of running from the cops and hiding their habits from their parents.

I know that drug and alcohol abuse is a problem in Marin County (54 percent of teens reported that they used alcohol in the last 30 days, compared to 44 percent in California and 28 percent country-wide 1 ), especially after I saw someone not only get severe alcohol poisoning at a party, but then go to another party the next night. To try and help change these norms, I joined the Marin Youth Health Advisory Council (MYHAC), a project of the Youth Leadership Institute (YLI) . To better understand where kids get alcohol and other drugs, we conducted a survey of 2990 students in most of the major high schools in Marin.

Surprisingly, it's not that hard for kids to buy alcohol in Marin. Of the people who buy alcohol from stores, 41 percent reported that they are only carded some of the time, and 15 percent reported that they are never carded, meaning more than half (56 percent) are not consistently asked for ID.

What's more is that 14 percent of young people who drink alcohol get it from their parents or family, and nine percent who do other drugs get it most often from their parents or family. Although the numbers are relatively small, the fact that this is happening is outrageous. Not only are parents giving alcohol and/or other drugs to their kids, but many times kids will pass the alcohol/drugs to their friends, meaning that one parent will often supply numerous kids with alcohol and/or drugs.

The results are troubling because adults often blame teens for drug and alcohol problems, not realizing that the community environment affects young people's choices. MYHAC held a press conference and got local media coverage to spread the word about the survey results. They are already using future projects to help lower the number of teens that get alcohol and other drugs from parents and stores. When I go away to college next fall, I'll have satisfaction in knowing that my actions made people aware of the problem and that MYHAC is working to correct it.

For more information about MYHAC visit www.yli.org or contact Wendy Todd at 415-455-1676.

1 California Healthy Kids Survey (2001); California Student Survey (2001); National Household Survey on Drug Abuse (2002); Marin Community Health Survey (2001); California Health Interview Survey (2001)

• Increase support for environmental policies like Responsible Beverage Service.
• Develop a training institute for prevention providers specializing in environmental approaches.
• Increase involvement in efforts to replace alcohol industry sponsorship at community events, such as the Marin County Fair.
• Develop and promote worksite wellness programs so that adults can model appropriate, alcohol-free ways to deal with stress.
• Develop media campaigns on underage alcohol access and use.

The Healthy Marin Partnership is a consortium of Marin hospitals, community, government, and business organizations formed in response to a 1994 legislative mandate that requires not-for-profit hospitals to complete a community needs assessment every three years. Each assessment guides community planning for the three years that follow. Previous needs assessments in Marin focused on access to healthcare and youth wellness. View the full report at www.HealthyMarin.org

March 2005

Breaking the Link:
Preventing Alcohol-Related Sexual Assault in Marin

Project of the Youth Leadership Institute

Educators, criminal justice personnel, parents, and youth service providers are increasingly concerned about the incidence of alcohol-facilitated sexual assault among youth in Marin County. Although Marin lacks a coordinated system to collect data from young people regarding this problem, several groups working with Marin youth have presented evidence that alcohol-related sexual assault is far from rare among local high school students. In 2001-2002, the Marin County Sexual Assault Response Team reported that 40 percent of their cases involved 14-19 year olds and 62 percent of these cases involved alcohol and/or drugs. Similarly, at a local high school, Community Violence Solutions found that 63 percent of sexual assault cases involved alcohol. Concerned that only one in 10 sexual assaults are reported to authorities, the Youth Leadership Institute feared that these disturbing findings were only the “tip of the iceberg.”

Determined to take appropriate action, a group of youth and adult community leaders formed the Breaking the Link task force to more accurately assess the prevalence of, and ultimately prevent alcohol-related sexual assault among youth. To do that, Breaking the Link is developing a social norms marketing campaign to change perceptions and behaviors among high school youth. Social norms campaigns are rooted in the theory that behavior is influenced by perceptions of the behavior and attitudes of our peers. This type of strategy is used by the alcohol and tobacco industries to acquire new and returning customers. Breaking the Link designed and administered a short survey regarding perceptions of binge drinking and sexual activity at one Marin County high school. High school students will compile and analyze the data.

Breaking the Link will work with students to create flyers and coordinate workshops that promote positive messages about healthy relationships, as indicated by the survey results. Notices about support and community resources for students dealing with issues related to sexual assault, bullying, alcohol and other drugs, and self defense will be posted in the school newspaper and in popular places around campus. For more information about the project contact the Youth Leadership Institute at 415-455-1676.

March 2005

CADCA Recognizes Marin County
and the Youth Leadership Institute

The Marin County Prevention Youth Council (PYC), a project of the Youth Leadership Institute, uses a unique approach to drug prevention, successfully combining environmental prevention with youth development strategies. In addition to training youth to become local leaders in substance abuse prevention, the PYC works to create community environments that discourage youth from using drugs by affecting policy change and influencing messages youth receive about alcohol and other drugs.

Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) honored the Marin County Prevention Youth Council with the 2004 Got Outcomes! Coalition of Excellence award at its National Leadership Forum in January.

CADCA’s Got Outcomes! initiative recognizes coalitions that have successfully reduced substance abuse in their community through comprehensive strategies or model programs. Honoring the two best coalitions out of 1,000 applicants, Got Outcomes! is a competitive awards program designed to acknowledge coalitions that implement evidence-based programs, policies or practices to achieve community-wide outcomes.

For more information visit the Youth Leadership Institute or CADCA.

Thursday, February 24, 2005

Marin's teen health crisis
Campaign launched to change bad habits

The partnership, a 10-year-old, public-private collaborative effort, launched what organizers said was an all-out attack on the four unhealthy teen habits. They said "upstream" prevention efforts earlier in life will reduce later "downstream" rates of the county's top killer diseases: cancer, heart disease and stroke.

"We are challenging our community's own little pockets of silence about issues like youth drinking and smoking," Tom Peters, president and chief executive of Marin Community Foundation, said at a kick-off event at the Marin Civic Center in San Rafael. "Both are at or near the top in Marin."

Patricia Kendall, chairwoman of the Healthy Marin Partnership, unveiled a report, "2005 Community Needs Assessment," which outlined goals and targets through 2008.

"It's time for us to draw a line in the sand," said Kendall, medical group administrator at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Rafael. "If we don't break the cycle now, we'll continue this - and it will get worse."

The report notes that 53 percent of Marin 11th-graders drink alcohol, compared with 37 percent statewide. In addition, 28 percent of Marin young adults ages 18 to 24 smoke cigarettes, compared with 18 percent statewide. The figures come from the state Healthy Kids Survey of 2003, administered the previous year to seventh-, ninth- and 11th-graders.

Two different questionnaires - the state Health Interview Survey of 2001 and the 2001 Marin Community Health Survey - found 34 percent of Marin children ages 2 through 17 are overweight or obese. No state-wide comparison figures were available.

The surveys found that of young Marin adults ages 18 through 24, 29.7 percent were overweight or obese, compared with the statewide average of 37 percent.

"Our kids are surrounded by advertising messages," said Lorne Needle, vice president of the Youth Leadership Institute in San Rafael. "By the time they're 21, they will have seen an average of 100,000 ads for alcohol."

The Marin Youth Advisory Council, an 11-member panel of Marin teens, has completed a survey of 3,000 of their peers on lifestyles issues such as diet, drinking and smoking. Needle, whose agency works with the teen council, said results of the survey will be released in about two months.

Under the plan outlined in broad strokes yesterday, the county will begin tracking progress in battling the four unhealthy behaviors in youth. For example, two measures to be used for tracking overweight and lack of exercise will be the number of 11th-graders who exercised for 20 minutes three or more times per week, and the number of 11th-graders who ate five or more servings of fruit and vegetables in the previous day.

A more detailed action plan will be set up in about four months, Kendall said.

"We need to recapture a healthy community," said Larry Meredith, director of the Marin Department of Health and Human Services. "The consequences of not recapturing the healthy community are too devastating to contemplate - they are obscene."

He urged adults to also participate by exercising at least a half-hour daily, limiting television to two hours daily, taking stairs instead of elevators and bringing in carrots and celery to work instead of candy and pastries.

"The fact is, 60 percent of our health is due to lifestyle, and that means things we can control," Meredith said. Only 30 percent is due to genetics, and health care quality accounts for the remaining 10 percent, he said.

The Healthy Marin Partnership is more a clearinghouse for ideas and networking than an actual agency or organization.

For example, in an effort to discourage alcohol ads at public events, two members of the partnership - the Marin Health and Human Services Department and the Marin County Fair - last year booted out the previous fair sponsor, Miller Brewing Co., and found six other fair co-sponsors that don't sell beer.

This year, there are nine co-sponsors, said Jim Farley, county fair chief.

"We've been swept up into a vision," said Farley, director of the county Department of Cultural Services. "We're the first county to do this."

Peters, former county health department director until he left in 1998 for his job at the Marin Community Foundation, said the Healthy Marin Partnership was originally set up in response to statewide efforts to remove hospitals' tax-exempt status. To show that was not a good idea, hospitals joined with county departments, business leaders and community agencies to show they could be integral parts of a joint public health plan, he said.

While the partnership runs on volunteers and a $22,000 administrative grant from Marin Community Foundation, numerous programs have arisen from relationships developed through Healthy Marin Partnership, Peters said.

Those include $1.07 million in grants to extend health care coverage to uninsured Marin kids and $225,000 over four years for Safe Routes to Schools, which has since leveraged that money into matching state and federal grants.

"A federal bill was introduced last week to allocate $850 million for a national Safe Routes to Schools program," said Deb Hubsmith, head of Marin Bicycle Coalition, a Healthy Marin Partnership collaborator. "Marin has become a model for the nation."

Contact Keri Brenner via e-mail at kbrenner@marinij.com

Wednesday, November 17, 2004

Marin County Youth drinking targeted
It is going to get harder for teenagers in Marin County to booze it up and raise hell after the announcement Tuesday that $890,000 is going to be spent on a tippling crackdown.

The state grant money will be used in an effort to change the drinking habits of Marin's youth, who have a higher rate of alcohol use and binge drinking than young people statewide. Among the strategies to be considered are reducing the availability of alcohol for underage drinkers and increasing law enforcement.

"Binge drinking among youth and young adults in Marin County is a very serious problem," said Larry Meredith, director of the county Department of Health and Human Services. "Alcohol is a key factor in the three leading causes of death among our young people, including traffic crashes, homicides and suicides, and is also used by our Marin County youth more than any other drug, including marijuana and tobacco."

A $750,000 state incentive grant will be used over the next three years to reduce binge drinking in young people between the ages of 12 and 25. Another $140,000 grant from the federal Enforcing the Underage Drinking Laws Program will be used by Novato over the next two years for anti-drinking programs in middle schools and high schools.
Full Article

Saturday October 9th, 2004

Cops get tough on teen drinking
Action comes after 10 Novato students are suspended. The Novato Police Department has announced a crackdown on underage drinking and illegal sales of booze, a move that follows the alcohol-related suspensions this week of 10 Novato high school students.

Ten students from Novato and San Marin high schools - eight boys and two girls - were suspended after being found under the influence of alcohol on the San Marin campus after homecoming football games at both schools last Saturday, district officials said.

"I think these are good kids who made a bad decision," Novato Unified School District Superintendent Jan La Torre-Derby said. "Our consequences are rigid."

"Novato is going to be a laboratory for what other communities are going to be looking into doing and they're just a step or two ahead," said Laurie Leiber of the Marin Institute, which studies alcohol use issues.
Full Article

Friday, June 11th, 2004

Marin has a new approach to alcohol problems.

Marin's New Responsible Attitude
You can expect to see fewer alcohol-related problems at Marin events like the Fairfax Festival. Marin has a new approach to alcohol problems, thanks to the County Health Department. The strategy is called Responsible Beverage Service¹ (RBS), and it's used to reduce alcohol-related problems within bars and restaurants and at special events. Marin's RBS program offers free training to owners, servers, clerks and event organizers. It also funds compliance checks and advocates for other policies that reduce alcohol problems.

In January, the Regional Prevention Coordinators Collaborative (which includes Marin, Napa and Sonoma Counties) and the Center for Applied Research Strategies brought in specialists from the Marin Institute, Beverage Consulting Network and the California State Department of Alcoholic Beverage Control to teach community members to train servers and storeowners about RBS issues. Special events servers have also begun RBS training. Marin now has three RBS trainers (two local sheriff's deputies and the director of the local Drinking Driver Program) and plans to do additional training.

As part of this focus, Marin's Drinking Driver Program has already implemented a "place of last drink" survey to help identify and prioritize RBS outreach efforts.

June 2004

PlayFair - Building Healthy Communities

Miller Gets the Boot
A collaborative of local health organizations replaced Miller Brewing Company as a title sponsor at this summer's Marin County Fair.  As the sponsor for the past six years, Miller advertised at the Entertainment Pavilion and at every concession stand as well as in all of the Fair's promotional materials. To supplant Miller in its prominent sponsorship, the group's joined together as "Play Fair" Marin, which includes the Marin Institute, Marin County Department of Health and Human Services, Marin Community Foundation, Healthy Marin Partnership, Youth Leadership Institute and Bay Area Community Resources.

Several group's had worked hard in years past to promote effective alcohol policies at the Fair, and the "Play Fair" coalition had a five-year plan to rid Miller of its sponsorship. Thanks in part to the leadership of Jim Farley, the Fair's deputy director, "Play Fair" coalition members replaced Miller with a pro-health, pro-community sponsorship within one year.

"This is particularly exciting because alcohol marketing and promotion, such as alcohol industry sponsorship, was identified as a key area of focus for Marin prevention," says Catherine Condon, prevention coordinator for Marin County Department of Health and Human Services, Division of Alcohol, Drug and Tobacco Programs. "It's just wonderful that these six community organizations pulled together the resources needed to buy the sponsorship out from under Miller."

This proactive direction taken by the collaborative and the Fair is a positive example of social change that can set a standard for Marin events, and hopefully serve as a model for communities elsewhere. "Play Fair" Marin eagerly anticipates the 2004 Marin County Fair and the opportunity to continue working with the organizers in the years ahead.
www.playfairmarin.org

April 2004

Location of the controversial beer booth in Fairfax, CA

Alcohol at Fairfax Festival Out of Control…Town Cracks Down
California Mayor Frank Egger and the Fairfax Town Council approved measures that will de-emphasize the sale and consumption of alcohol at future Fairfax Festivals. In past years, the entrance to the Fairfax Festival was dominated by a beer booth, which glorified the “drinking/party atmosphere.” The groups operating the beer booths will provide free water, stop posting alcohol-related advertising, and train servers in responsible serving practices.

March 2004

Marin County Unveils New Prevention Plan
The Marin County Department of Health and Human Services has developed a new strategic plan “to foster healthy individuals, families, and communities free of alcohol and other drug problems.” The plan calls for a reduction in youth access to alcohol, the implementation of responsible beverage service programs, a decrease in pro-alcohol marketing, and increased collaboration among local prevention providers. The new plan was developed by the Marin Alcohol and Other Drug (AOD) Prevention Collaborative—a group made up of prevention providers and educators.

During a year-long strategic planning process, the Prevention Collaborative collected data, identified and prioritized areas of focus, developed an action plan, gathered additional community input, and finalized a scope of work. Based on surveys, an in-depth needs assessment, and an inventory of the current prevention programs, the Collaborative developed a five-year Scope of Work for the County with four priority areas:

• Access to Alcohol and Other Drugs
• Pro-Alcohol Marketing and Promotion Influences
• Systemic Capacity for Prevention
• Norms and Awareness of Alcohol and Other Drug Issues

The Health Department’s Division of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Drug Programs will release requests for proposals (RFPs) in April to providers who can create programs to help achieve the strategic plan’s prevention goals. For more information on the RFPs, please contact Catherine Condon at 415-499-4218.

Friday, February 6th, 2004

Countering Coors' Halloween Trickery: Local Response Goes National
When we learned of Coors' plans to target youth with the PG-13 Scary Movie 3, it was critical that we mobilize a grassroots response in Marin County and other communities.

Working with our partner, the Youth Leadership Institute (YLI), Marin Institute staff developed a counter-marketing media advocacy effort called the Scary Beer Ads Campaign. YLI then recruited California's Friday Night Live Partnership, a statewide network of youth prevention groups in 55 counties. Word about the campaign spread through the California Prevention Collaborative, the California Council on Alcohol Policy and the Marin Institute Board of Directors. Within a week the campaign had gone national.

Friday, November 7th, 2003

Marin Institute Forges Healthy Partnership at County Fair
The Marin Institute, the Youth Leadership Institute, and the Marin County Department of Health and Human Services organized a successful community outreach effort at this summer's Marin County Fair. Together, the three organizations created a booth highlighting the alcohol industry's predatory youth marketing practices, part of the Healthy Marin Partnership's "Prevention Pavilion" at the fair. The Marin Institute joined more than 30 community organizations in the effort to provide fairgoers with interactive and fun information on healthy choices early in life.
Full Article

Thursday, June 19th, 2003

Teens say it's easy to buy tobacco, drink
Teens have an easy time getting alcohol, tobacco and drugs in Marin, and might have their families to thank for the urges to use them, according to a survey by the Youth Leadership Institute.
Full Article

Related Links:
Youth Health Advisory Council (YHAC) Survey Results (.pdf)
Youth Health Advisory Council Recommendations (.pdf)

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