Your community is more aware of underage drinking and its consequences as a result of your Town Hall Meeting (THM). Many members of your community may feel compelled to take preventive action now. Make sure that your THM has been a catalyst for action by ensuring that this momentum will continue to build and that solutions offered during your THM will be implemented.

Public awareness of underage drinking is the basis of prevention. Maintaining public awareness after your THM can reinforce the idea that everyone in a community has an essential role in helping young people avoid alcohol. For example, parents can actively discourage alcohol use by their children, and local government agencies can ensure strict compliance checks of alcohol outlets. Continuing public awareness of this issue also can help in changing current social norms that tolerate or even encourage underage drinking and in securing funding of prevention programs that your community might want to implement after your THM. Maintain and increase public awareness by working through the media and communication channels in your community that helped to promote your THM.

A few suggestions are to:

• Write a letter to the editor in response to any article about a traffic fatality or juvenile delinquency involving underage drinking. Include activities that your community is doing or should do to prevent underage drinking. Use attendance numbers at your THM to demonstrate that underage drinking is an issue of interest to the community.
• Encourage local radio and television stations to air the new public service announcements (PSAs) to prevent underage drinking that the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) created in collaboration with the Ad Council. The objective of the PSAs is to encourage parents to speak with their children about the dangers of underage drinking.
• Promote local implementation of PSAs on underage drinking developed by the Coalition for a Drug-Free Greater Cincinnati. Various media spots can be placed in YOUR neighborhood through media channels such as your local community newspaper, theater or cable channel. Contact Jeff Stewart for more information.
• Encourage schools to use their websites or newsletters to regularly remind parents about actions they can take to prevent underage drinking. Schools are more likely to take this action if you supply them with a topic issue; for example, why parents should support alcohol-free after-prom events and graduation parties, and the need for parents to be extra vigilant during summer months, when the largest percentage of young people first try alcohol.

Look beyond the media for additional, long-term, ways to keep underage drinking in the public eye:

• Post a billboard or other signage about underage drinking and its prevention where parents and other community members will see it frequently. Local organizations that helped support your THM also may be willing to fund public signage.
• Create a speakers bureau of people who can seek out and respond to opportunities to discuss underage drinking at school and community events throughout the year.
• Involve your community in selecting and implementing evidence-based programs to prevent underage drinking, based on community goals and strategies developed during your THM. To help secure program funding, emphasize that underage drinking prevention programs also can help to prevent negative behaviors associated with early alcohol use (e.g., assaults, drug use, injuries, suicide, violence, and risky sex) and to support positive behaviors (e.g., academic achievement). As a result, underage drinking prevention programs are an extremely cost-effective way for communities to invest in healthy youth development and well-being.