A youth substance misuse prevention program from the Illinois Association for Behavioral Health [IABH] has partnered with the Illinois High School Association [IHSA] and IESA to expand outreach efforts.
Generation Lead is in its second year of operation. The program aims to delay initial substance use through physical and digital material made accessible to middle and high school students. This includes commercials, posters, bookmarks and other awareness-raising materials. Messaging also offers information on recovery services for those in need.
The program needed ways to reach students beyond the occasional visit to a school assembly or health class, said Ashley Webb, chief operating officer and vice president of programs at the IABH, during an interview on WGLT’s Sound Ideas.
“Our goal is to captivate an audience, to let them know that being a leader is OK, being substance-free is OK, and taking that positive message and hopefully sprinkling that through their peers,” said Webb.
“Our best leaders can be student athletes, and so it's a way for coaches and the athletes to get involved in a community awareness event and campaign.”
The IHSA and IESA, both based in Bloomington, already have policies against substance misuse for student-athletes. The partnership with Generation Lead provides tangible resources to further share messages against such practices with students, families, teachers and social workers. Generation Lead also shares digital materials.
“We know youth are on social media, so making sure that they're seeing those advertisements and listening,” said Webb. “We're targeting those communities and making sure that it's not just something that they're hearing at school or in their meetings that you need to live substance free, but also seeing it and connecting it.”
The program is funded by a grant from the Illinois Department of Human Services, through the Regional Care Coordination Agency.
Generation Lead offers free material that can be requested on its website. Webb said there are requests each week for more material to be used in schools throughout the state.
“We have heard from many preventionist school teachers, social workers, guidance counselors, coaches, about how they've seen our material and how they want our campaign in their community,” said Webb.
All programs offered by the IABH have youth advocates to represent their communities and share messaging that they think works. For Generation Lead, the group helps with messaging that works statewide and can also work on differentiating messaging based on where in the state the material goes.
“Illinois is really diverse, and so from rural communities to urban and suburban, we have to make sure that we're tweaking our messaging and our outreach in those ways,” said Webb.
