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Prevention Services in Schools

Module 1

Part One: What is Prevention?

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Our Partners

With funding from

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What you’ll learn in this module

The role prevention plays in protecting the mental wellness of students, staff, and families

Strategies to implement prevention in your school

Turning existing prevention practices into best practices

The local low to no cost prevention program opportunities available in your area

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We know that there are many links between health and education. They are not separate.

Our health, both mental and physical, affect our ability to concentrate in school and feel ready to learn.

When we learn and receive a great education, we become healthier, more productive citizens.

However, we know that there are many factors that impact a person’s health and education outcomes...health and education do not exist in a vacuum.

There are other contextual factors that exist such as interpersonal relationships, family, and culture.

There is also the context of an individual’s community where things like policies, economic factors, access to healthcare and jobs play large role in one’s health and education.

Today we’re going to examine the school’s role in promoting and protecting the mental, emotional, and behavioral wellness of individuals for when these individuals are healthy, they go on to learn, and when they learn, they build strong, viable, healthy communities.

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US Youth Mental Health

Each year, 1 in 6 U.S. children ages 6-17 experience a mental health disorder

National Mental Health Alliance 2019

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Ohio Youth Mental Wellness

In Ohio, suicide is the leading cause of death among youth ages 10-14

Ohio Department of Health 2019

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Prevalent Youth Alcohol and Marijuana Use

29.2% high school students currently use alcohol

21.7% high school students currently use marijuana

7.2% high school students currently misuse prescription opioids

Youth Risk Behavior Survey CDC 2019

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Increased Youth Tobacco Use

50% of high school students tried electronic vape product of some type.
33% regularly use electronic vape products
Overall tobacco use has increased from 19.5% in 2017 to 36.5 % in 2019

2019 Youth Risk Behavior Survey CDC

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Ohio Developments

Opioid Epidemic
2016 The Ohio Joint Study Committee on Drug Use Prevention Education
2017 Ohio Joint Study Committee on Drug Use Prevention Education
2018 Ohio Drug Use Prevention Resource Guide Released

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Prevention Education

Biennial Budget included:

$18 million for prevention education through OMHAS
$2 million for teacher professional development through ODE

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Student Wellness & Success

Biennial Budget Included:

$675 million

11 eligible expenses
8 community partners

Preliminary Data:

More than 1 million students served by behavioral and physical health care services in schools

Do Not Change Slide

In his own words, the governor has stated that “Ohio is in the midst of a public health crisis. Based on reports from the Ohio Department of Health, about 13 Ohioans die each day from unintentional drug overdoses. Approximately five people a day take their own lives. The repercussions of the drug epidemic and mental illness have touched the lives of all Ohioans, regardless of their race, ethnicity, or socio-economic background, and every community in our state has been affected” The Governor has also stated that “...we must reduce the stigma and provide impactful prevention education for Ohio’s children beginning at an early age.”

In addition to the 18 million in K-12 prevention funds, the governor has set aside $675 million dollars of the state budget to ensure every child has access to quality services that address non-academic barriers to reach the Whole Child

This initiative has taken great strides in ensuring that Ohio’s children live longer, healthier lives free of mental, emotional, and behavioral health issues.

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What is prevention?

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Risk and Protective Factors

Graphic from: Communities that Care

Source: Catalano and Hawkins Research

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Do Not Change Slide

Basic and Extended Version Notes

In module 1 of this training, we gave an overview of prevention and touched on the concept of how schools play an important role in providing services that reduce student risk factors and increase protective factors to prevent MEB health issues.

In this module, we’d like to take a deeper dive into the science behind HOW MEB or wellness supports like prevention, social-emotional learning, trauma-informed care, and prevention work to prevent MEB health issues in students. There are several models of prevention that contribute to evidence-based strategies, but today we are going to discuss one of the most prominent models: The Risk and Protective Factors model.

Here is a short video of one person discussing her personal experience with her own risk and protective factors and how key preventative interventions changed the course of her life.

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Risk and Protective Factors

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Basic Version

Note to speaker: We will be adding a segment from the video that you can use here. You can choose to use this segment or speak to the activity.

Protective factors act like a stack of popsicle sticks in a person’s life. Imagine you have one popsicle stick and you tried to break it in half. It would break very easily. Similarly, if we try to handle life’s stressors on our own without support or help we would break easily too. Particularly if we have been exposed to repeated, extensive trauma or toxic stress.

But if we have the presence of additional protective factors such as a supportive community, a connection with a mentor, teacher or other caring adult, and positive school experiences, these act like the stack of popsicle sticks. All of these factors layered together are much harder to break. This is how prevention works--we layer together the idea of building relationships with students along with evidence-based strategies and services to protect the mental wellness of students, and we can actually PREVENT long term MEB health consequences.

Extended Version

Note to speaker: If you choose to do this demonstration live you’ll need several popsicle sticks. You can use the script above to perform the demonstration or make up your own.

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Evidence Based Prevention Strategies

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Basic Version and Extended Version Notes

So we’ve said that having a system for MEB supports that reduces student risk factors is important, but how does a school ensure that the supports are evidence-based and are actually going to work.

Luckily there are six strategies from the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (the prevention arm of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) that are proven to help reduce MEB health issues in individuals and communities (including schools).

In module one of this training, we provide a definition and examples for each of these strategies, so for an in depth explanation and examples, please refer to module one.

Here we will provide a brief definition of these strategies, but we have developed a planning framework to help you implement these strategies into your school planning.

**click to animate** Education is the first of the strategies, and this involves two way communication between a participant and an educator. Typically education is provided through an evidence based prevention curriculum, but it could also be provided using evidence-informed strategies. The key with education is to provide people with an opportunity to learn about their risks associated with MEB health issues, key coping skills, social emotional learning skills (especially in K-12 prevention), and refusal skills if necessary.

**click to animate** Environmental strategies are ones that address the environment in which an individual lives, works, and plays. A simple policy change such as changing school discipline protocols to be more restorative and less punitive can actually support a person’s MEB health. We can implement these strategies into the policies in our communities too. For example, the Tobacco 21 policy raised the age for a person to purchase tobacco from 18-21. This simple policy reduced the number of teenagers who have access to tobacco products.

**click to animate** Information dissemination is a one way communication strategy to get prevention messaging into the hands of people who need it. Information dissemination includes social media posts, fliers, billboards, etc...These strategies are best used with either education or an environmental strategy to support the messages.

**click to animate** Community-based process is the process of readying individuals in a community to provide the prevention the community needs. This could include training individuals, analyzing data and needs from the community, or engaging in any part of a strategic planning process. This is an important part of ensuring that a community’s prevention strategies are based on its needs.

**click to animate** Alternatives is short for events or activities that provide alternative choices to engaging in behaviors that do not support MEB health. Alternatives provide individuals with opportunities to engage in prosocial activities that will help mitigate risk factors and increase protective factors. For students this might include alcohol free events after prom, sports, music lessons, after school clubs, and summer camps.

**click to animate** Problem Identification and Referral includes a series of strategies and services designed to identify MEB health concerns in an individual and determining whether the issue can be supported with prevention services or if a referral to treatment services is needed. Typically individuals would receive a mental health screening provided by a preventionist or other qualified individual and then supported by prevention services or referred to treatment services if needed.

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Local Resources

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Contact Information

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