This article is reprinted from the Las Cruces Sun-News. Visit their site to learn more.
The Unified Prevention Coalition for Doña Ana County and New Mexico State Universities Wellness, Alcohol and Violence Rx, your local drug prevention programs, are working to collect the New Mexico Community Survey on behalf of the New Mexico Behavioral Health Services Division and the Office of Substance Abuse Prevention this spring.
The NMCS measures the community’s perceptions of and experiences with substance use and misuse. The UP! Coalition and WAVE Rx will use this data to determine substance abuse prevention and treatment needs in Doña Ana County and New Mexico as a whole. The more New Mexico residents who complete the survey, the better NM OSAP can respond to the problems and areas of most concern.
The NMCS is completely anonymous, voluntary, targets all residents 18 years of age or older and is bilingual. The survey is only offered online this year at www.tinyurl.com/NMCS2020 due to COVID-19 concerns. After completion of the survey participants can enter to win a drawing for $100 cash card.
Not only do NMCS data findings help to define perceptions, they also help to define solutions. For example, based on NMCS results, parties were identified as the main source of alcohol for 18-20-year-olds in Doña Ana County, which allowed the UP! Coalition and WAVE Rx to target efforts to reduce underage drinking parties. Also, more than half of 2019 NMCS respondents reported that it was okay to provide alcohol to a minor for one reason or another. To address these dangerous and illegal behaviors, UP! and WAVE Rx have worked to increase the perceived risk of legal consequences for breaking alcohol-related laws and partnered with schools and law enforcement to enforce local laws and policies. The amount of 18- to 20-year-olds accessing alcohol at parties decreased by 42% from 2018 to 2019, providing support for continued prevention efforts.
In 2019, 21 percent of NMSU students and 24 percent of community members received a prescription for painkillers in the year prior to taking the survey. Evidence-based prevention strategies prove that restricting social access to prescription painkillers curb misuse, thus saving lives. Both programs have worked in concert to disseminate messaging to key populations about safe use, storage and disposal of medication. These populations include students, parents and the elderly. NMCS data from parents showed promising results. There was an increase of 24 percent in locking up meds and decrease of 25 percent in sharing their prescription medication from 2018 to 2019.
“Collecting local data like the New Mexico Community Survey is vital to the health and wellness of New Mexicans,” said Alexis Brandt, data specialist for the Center for Health Innovation. “This information ensures our prevention programs continue to work toward meeting the needs of the community.”
COVID-19 threatens to negatively affect this important data collection because of the program’s inability to target underrepresented populations such as men, elderly and Spanish speakers. Community members are strongly encouraged to take the survey online to help support local prevention efforts.
The NMCS is available at www.tinyurl.com/NMCS2020 .
For more information on UP! contact Alyssa Myrick at (575) 597-0042 or email amyrick@swchi.org .
This news release is made available by the Unified Prevention (UP!) Coalition for Doña Ana County, a program of the Center for Health Innovation.