Nine out of ten addicts in America started using substances before the age of eighteen, according to the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse. To help educate Rolla Public School students on the dangers of substance use, members of the Rolla High School Peer Prevention group, with help from the local Drug-Free Communities task force, visit Rolla Public Schools to help spread awareness on substance abuse and encourage students to partake in healthier behaviors.
The Phelps County Child Advocacy Network was awarded a grant by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to bring the Drug-Free Communities coalition to central Missouri. In collaboration with Prevention Consultants, the Drug-Free Communities task force works to address youth substance use in Phelps County and seven other neighboring counties.
David Chirban, the program coordinator for the Drug-Free Communities task force, believed that emphasizing drug prevention in Rolla schools would be important to reach a wide number of young students, who can be particularly vulnerable to developing addictions.
“When I started a year ago, we [Drug-Free Communities] didn’t necessarily have a lot of emphasis on the schools, but it seemed like our target audience was going to be falling within the junior high and the high school within Rolla’s demographics, so I thought it would be important for us to be a little bit more present,” said Chirban.
Intending to spread more awareness in the schools, Drug-Free Communities decided to establish a Peer Prevention group at the high school. Members of the Peer Prevention group were hand-picked by RHS Principal Dr. Corey Ray and Prevention Consultants executive director Jamie Myers to volunteer in Rolla schools to spread awareness to adolescents about the dangers of substance use.
“So he [Jamie Myers] collaborated with me early in July to try to identify students who would be willing and do a good job of presenting to the students that are [at a] lower age level,” said Dr. Ray.
Selected members of the Peer Prevention group then go through training at the beginning of the school year to prepare them to begin presenting to the students.
“There’s twelve to fifteen different high school students that are part of the peer prevention team. They come in at the beginning of the academic year, and they go through a training,” explained Chirban.
RHS senior Hayden Kissinger and Peer Prevention member specializes within the group in educating lower grade levels about the dangers of alcohol abuse. Kissinger and twelve others went on rotations to the Junior High on Mar. 13 and 14 to make connections with the students there.
“I’ll end up going to [the] junior high probably four times throughout the entire year giving seminars. Usually, we speak to the kids, we play games with them, [and] teach them knowledge on statistics about alcohol abuse,” said Kissinger.
Besides spreading awareness about substance use, another important role for the members is to model positive, healthy, behavior for their younger audiences. Chirban believes that providing younger students with these positive role models can help normalize making healthier decisions regarding substance use.
“To have those peer prevention people at the high school I think is very effective because it normalizes the idea of not being on substances when you’re fifteen, sixteen, seventeen years old,” said Chirban.
Ultimately, the role the Peer Prevention group plays in Rolla schools is to educate students on the dangers of substance use so they can make healthier, informed decisions.
“Sometimes people act without all the information and that comes back to harm them in the end. So if we can educate them about the dangers of it [substance abuse], they’re more likely to make a choice that would be more beneficial for them,” said Dr. Ray.
