Strengthening community partnerships to promote adolescent school engagement and prevent problems such as alcohol misuse

Information outlining the Australian National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) safe drinking guidelines for children will be circulated. These guidelines recommend that children under the age of 18 should not consume alcohol (message 1). Information will be provided to children and their parents/guardians (via their school). This information will promote delaying the consumption of alcohol by adolescents until the age of 18. Via this information, we will also encourage parents to set a rule with their child that alcohol is not to be consumed by their child until the age of 18 (message 2). Parents will also be encouraged not to provide alcohol to their children until they are 18 years of age (message 3). The three key messages identified above will be reinforced via school classes and and schools will develop activities with their broader communities to help further promotion of these key messages. Printed resources will provide information on the NHMRC drinking guidelines and the three key messages. These will take the form of booklets, brochures, posters and bookmarks. These resources have been developed by the intervention team and have been tested for clarity and appeal with focus groups. Within each community a coalition of commuinity individuals will work with the schools to help deliver and reinforce the key messages. The coaltion will also try and spread these messages to the broader community. Specifically the coaltion will develop a social marketing plan that will outlne activities that will take place through the school and the broader community. The social marketing plan will identify strategies that each school and community will use to promote the three key messages. For example they may choose to promote the drinking guidelines at key community events; they may place posters around the community highlighting the drinking guidelines, and the need for parents to set a rule about drinking. They may circulate printed resources through existing community services. Each community will document their activites, and this will be provided in a formal social marketing plan to the research and evaluation team. Coalitions will be provided with a total $5000 dollars to implement social marketing activities. Schools will use the information for approximately one school year, and the broader community will use the information for approximately one calender year. Communities will be audited to ensure that ther submitted social marketing plan is being implemented faithfully. Liqour outlets (stores that sell alcohol to) will also be monitored for the sale of alcohol to indiviudals under the age of 18. As this against the law, the research team will provide feedback to these outlets, and encourage them to change their selling practices. Feedback to stores who are breaking the law will only be provided to stores in the intervention communities.