Young individuals are the spine of the society. Nations rely on their creativity, effort and insight to drive future progress. Given the indispensable role of the youths in any given society, some communities have moved fast and invested efforts to promote the welfare of their young people. Tackling the threats and challenges that this group faces is among the many strategies that these societies have recruited to enhance the wellbeing of their youths. Underage drinking is one of the top challenges teenagers in the United States are faced with. Several teenage lives are needlessly lost via deaths related to underage drinking, for example, drunk driving road accidents. Underage drinking has also increased dependency levels in the United States (Fagan, Hawkins & Catalano, 2011). Some communities in the recent past, have been hailed for their efforts of achieving resident-level reduction in misuse of alcohol among the teenagers.
Community-level intervention programs addressing teenage driving target bringing about reduction in the levels of underage drinking within small geographic locations, for example, within a county. Orange County, California is an example. The community intervention programs usually target teens, and at times, even the young adults within a county. However, these programs often encompass the efforts of different stakeholders or local coalitions within a locality. Anyone with an interest in seeing underage drinking come to an end is often invited to participate in these programs (Fagan, Hawkins & Catalano, 2011). In community intervention programs, the stakeholders and the approaches involved and deployed in the intervention procedure are termed as program principles. To develop a close understanding of how community intervention programs work, it is crucial to first examine the program principles recruited in such intervention procedures.
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Community involvement in prevention of underage drinking incorporates parents’ and guardians’ corporation (Das, Salam, Arshad, Finkelstein & Bhutta, 2016). Parents and guardians have a unique opportunity to community intervention programs through various ways. First, parents and guardians can vet their teens’ friends and seek to note any possibilities of the teenagers’ association with people deemed to be sources of bad influence. Parents can also use these opportunities to advise and counsel the teenagers on the harmful effects of drinking. Additionally, parents should also refrain from according the teenagers too much pocket money and also abstain from offering liquor to the teenagers. Finally, parents and guardians have an inimitable privilege of punishing the teenagers whenever they are reported to be involved in underage drinking. The punishments can be extended to involve imposition of sanctions, far from the conventional physical punishment.
Advancing the arguments above, communal intervention programs also incorporate communal participation (Das, Salam, Arshad, Finkelstein & Bhutta, 2016). Adult persons within a locality should collectively pool efforts aimed at guiding the teenagers towards making the right choices. Apart from guidance, senior individuals are also urged to be good role models to teenagers within their locality. They should therefore never at one point offer teenagers alcoholic drinks or involve the teenagers in the process of alcohol acquisition. The community police departments also play significant roles in controlling underage drinking. They are tasked with the duty of arresting underage drinkers, especially those who drink and drive. Finally, shops and vendors of alcoholic content are also expected to desist from selling their products to teenagers.
Das, Salam, Arshad, Finkelstein and Bhutta (2016) also explored how holistic approaches can be applied to prevention of underage drinking within a community. This entails exploring the roots of a vice, followed by rectification of the causes of a problem. Holistic approaches also include focusing on the situation at hand. In the case of underage drinking, it is important to examine the factors causing teenagers to drink. Teenagers could be consuming alcohol due to several reasons. It could be down to peer pressure, the fact that alcohol is cheap, they are offered the drinks by senior persons, or because they have the money to acquire the drinks. These causes should be addressed in a manner that is unique to themselves. Holistic approaches also encompass facilitation of rehabilitation procedures.
Conclusion
Community intervention procedures present broad aptitude for realization of success in regulation and prevention of population-level vices and problems. An example of a field where community intervention programs have proven fruitful is the prevention of underage drinking. Communities have been able to deploy parental participation, overall community involvement and several holistic approaches towards the preclusion of underage drinking.
References
Das, J.K., Salam, R.A., Arshad, A., Finkelstein, Y., & Bhutta, Z.A. (2016). Interventions for adolescent substance abuse: An overview of systematic reviews. The Journal of Adolescent Health, 59 (4), S61-S75. DOI: 10.1016/j.jadohealth.2016.06.021
Fagan, A.A., Hawkins, J.D., & Catalano, R.F. (2011). Engaging communities to prevent underage drinking. Alcohol Res Health, 34 (2), 167-174. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3860564/
