Environmental scanning aims to identify your community’s risk factors that can contribute to underage or excessive alcohol consumption. Conducting a scan allows you to observe and document the 4 P’s: Price, Product, Promotion, and Placement. Recording these observations and pairing that information with other assessment data, such as youth survey data, allows you to create a clear picture of alcohol in your community. From that picture, you can then identify strategies to reduce underage and excessive use of alcohol.
The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services’ Substance Use, Gambling, and Epidemiology Section has allocated funding to Prevention Network (PN) through the Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment (SAPT) Block Grant American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) Supplemental to expand two programs in the state of Michigan: the Michigan Coalition to Reduce Underage Drinking (MCRUD), and Parenting Awareness Michigan (PAM). In addition, this funding establishes a third program around youth coalition development. To guide program expansion across the state, the Michigan Youth Coalition Network (MYCN) was created as an extension of Prevention Network. The MYCN will provide professional development opportunities, resources, and support to coalitions working with youth around substance use disorder (SUD) prevention. Within the MYCN, a statewide MYCN coordination position has been created. The MYCN Coordinator will assess current youth programming activities, provide resources and support to new and existing coalitions interested in involving youth in coalition practices, and coordinate coalition leadership development opportunities.