By Luda Tang         

Somerville Cares About Prevention (SCAP) held its 18th Annual Meeting virtually on May 26. Lovelee Heller-Botarri, the Program Director at SCAP, introduced the meeting as a celebration of the work they have done over the past year.

During the meeting, Matthew Mitchell, the Prevention Service Manager with the city of Somerville Health and Human Services Department, presented some of the achievements they accomplished over the past year, including four grants and several programs. Youths from Somerville Positive Forces (SPF) Jr. and 100 also shared their experiences and activities on substance abuse prevention.

The four grants included MassCALL3, Overdose Data to Action (OD2A), Massachusetts Tobacco Cessation Program (MTCP), and Office of the Attorney General’s Cultural Humility. The first two grants were developed in cooperation with Institute for Community Health (ICH).

Researchers and evaluation project managers from ICH, Julia Curbera and Jeff Demarais, presented an impact address for what they, along with the city of Somerville, accomplished. The goal of MassCALL3 is to prevent the initiation of first substance misuse of youth. The team has already been collecting data and made an assessment based on racial equity to reach a diverse group of people.

During the process, they reached out to around 50 Somerville youth and adult caregivers. After the information had been gathered, Curbera said they are in the process of analyzing it and developing effective strategies based on this analysis to better inform the public about prevention of substance misuse.

For the OD2A, its aims are to provide overdose prevention training to unhoused individuals. The team has reached 176 individuals since July 2020 to provide training on educating about the risk of overdose and helping them to know on how to respond to overdoses. They will also share the results with the community to get their feedback and adjust the training contents. The next step will be to increase outreach to the business community, which can give them more information about overdose prevention.

Among the programs, social media education and outreach also achieved some success in educating the community with substance misuse prevention content. The meeting provided a few numbers to demonstrate this. From July 2021 to June 2020, the @somervilleprevention Instagram account had 916 followers and created content interactions with more than 4,629, which effectively did the job of educating community members while they were on their phones.

An important part of SCAP’s program is Somerville Positive Forces (SPF) Jr. and 100. Youth from these two teams introduced their mission and vision and the activities they have done to support that.

They strive to reduce underage alcohol and drug use for youth in Somerville and address community issues related to underage drinking, drug use, and bullying. To do that, they developed numerous activities and events, like the 84 & Spark Share Summits on Racial Equity, Student Health Trivia & Community Conversation, and Mindfulness Practices and Training to reduce students’ anxieties and stress.

Through their work, they discovered that issues like anxiety and depression, bullying, alcohol use, and body issues are concerns to youths in the community. The results deserve the public’s attention in order to launch some policies dealing with this. Leaders from SPFJR and SPF100 believe their work is important.

Havilah Nimako, one leader from SPFJR, shared her thoughts during the presentation, “This work is important to me because I want to tell people that doing drugs and smoking is bad and that it makes you sick. It is also important because it makes our community a better and safer place to live in.”