Prescription Drug Case Study

Prescription Drug Abuse Warning: Youth Advocates Speak Out!

Each year youth volunteers in CASA’s high school internship program, Students Together Against Alcohol ‘N Drugs (STAAND), identify a substance abuse prevention issue that is most relevant to them and issues they recognize that impact their peers.  Over the course of Fall and Winter, they conduct research, study the issue and develop the program for their annual school journalism event.

As a media advocacy opportunity, this event provides multiple layers for youth-led advocacy targeting multiple audiences. First, on the most basic level, the event is an extended news event for high school journalism students. The additional layer is the leadership role of youth as the event planners and hosts. STAAND volunteers become local issue experts: studying data, identifying contributing factors, and learning about effective prevention strategies. They become advocates themselves, reaching out to traditional media to cover the timely health issue that impacts area teens.

For the 14th Annual Safe & Saber Youth Journalism News Event (2009) the emerging issue identified by STAAND volunteers was prescription drug abuse. Prescription drug abuse had been front page news with the accidental over-dose resulting in the death of actor Heath Ledger, but “pharming parties” were new to local teens.  STAAND volunteers released regional data to journalism class members showing that East County teens abuse prescription painkillers at a much high rate than their peers throughout San Diego County.

The event generated six unique television news stories, in both Spanish and English, including a three minute story.   In addition, there were school newspaper stories written by the high school journalism students who attended and several of the news stories were re-packaged and rebroadcast on later news programs. The news advisory also generated extended coverage on Fox News which ran more than 10 minutes of interviews on their website with a permalink to keep the story alive.