Welcome to December Partner Pulse

Thank you so much for your participation in the Tackling Youth Substance Abuse Coalition. Whether you are a business or nonprofit partner, workgroup member or Steering Committee member, your commitment and hard work helps us to accomplish our goals. Below you will read about TYSA workgroups, decisions of the TYSA Steering Committee, and important partner updates and upcoming events.

Policy & Advocacy

- The group finalized details for the TYSA legislative briefing, including who to invite and how to structure the event. The group decided to use slides from the previous Steering Committee meeting that explain TYSA structure and highlight TYSA accomplishments. Additionally, time will be built into the agenda for elected officials to share what they are doing around these issues. Specific asks were developed and categorized into areas of the continuum with the intention of connecting data points to highlight the need for each ask.

- The group also discussed legislation around bupe, with concerns that the requirement for people to have treatment counseling and written plans will restrict access. Providers may drop out because the many requirements are asking a lot from a PCP. The need to integrate and normalize addiction treatment within the PCP practice experience was expressed.

School-Based

- The group decided to focus on behavioral health and start with public and parochial high schools at the moment, with the goal of expanding focus into middle schools as well. The group wants to look at universal, selected, and targeted strategies, emphasize sustainability, and do asset mapping, particularly focusing on implementation. Also, they plan to have prevention and early intervention partners at the table and to make recommendations about EBPs and how to bring resources into your school. Strategies suggested included recommending 1-time presenters to schools/creating a 1-off forum, doing outreach to every school, mapping available resources to focus on universal intervention and to also show what is already happening, and looking at school intoxication policy.

- The group will train the SAPIS in December to co-facilitate the High School Professional Development Workshops for school staff. The goal is to roll out the high school PD in the spring.

- The need for a Staten Island Teen Intervene training was also discussed along with difficulties in implementing Teen Intervene and Youth First.

Data

- After the positive response from Social Norms to saturation mapping, the group would like to continue working with individual workgroups to help them do their work better through visual representations. This will help show reach and progress of specific programs and campaigns as well as highlight gaps the group needs to look at. Data plans to work with the Opioid Workgroup next to establish measures of success, beginning with building in data before the implementation of the Just Ask consumer education campaign.

- The possibility of an online Data Dashboard is being explored where data from top TYSA strategies would be shared and connected to community level data. The group would also like TYSA members to see how their individual commitments contribute to overall TYSA outcomes. Additionally, the group would like to explore the idea of sharing data snapshots in Partner Pulse.

Opioid

- The group screened the updated Just Ask materials and made edits as necessary. They also developed messaging specific to doctors and pharmacists. The group discussed aligning Just Ask with an initiative that encourages  doctors to co-prescribe naloxone when prescribing opioids. This would include targeting specific areas to ensure that patients who most need naloxone can access it.

- The group made suggestions for the policy asks for the legislative briefing. They included more awareness around harm reduction, the need to bridge the gap between treatment and harm reduction services, addressing insurance coverage barriers to naloxone access, having city dollars designated to pharmacies to cover naloxone costs, and removing prior authorization barriers for naloxone.

- The DOHMH will be launching a pharmacy detailing campaign in SI in February/March. The group proposed including Just Ask materials as well as TYSA pharmacy inserts in the toolkit.

- The group also discussed a brown bag/Grandparents You Matter workshop and what the structure and messaging would look like.

Social Norms