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Health department asks Gallatin County to join Planet Youth prevention coalition
Summary
Sherry Roberts of the Gallatin County Health Department presented Planet Youth, an Icelandic-model youth prevention program, and asked county leaders to join a community collaborative to review eighth- and ninth-grade survey data and design local prevention steps.
Sherry Roberts, Gallatin County Health Department, told the Fiscal Court on March 12 that the department is launching Planet Youth, a community-based youth prevention program modeled on an Icelandic approach and newly adopted for the county's health district.
Roberts said the program uses partners across schools and community organizations to make healthy choices more normative among adolescents and to reduce risky behaviors. She said, "Planet Youth is a program that's new to the health department just this year," and described the model's long-term drops in adolescent substance use as an example the county hopes to replicate.
Roberts asked the court to participate in a collaborative that will review confidential, school-administered surveys of eighth- and ninth-grade students. "We are collecting data from our eighth and ninth grade students," she said, and added that parental permission is required: students must bring a signed permission slip from a parent or guardian to participate. Roberts said the health department expects to collect the surveys in March and April, receive a data report in about eight weeks, and then convene community stakeholders to identify interventions.
Deanna Stewart, identified in the meeting as a community health worker with the health department, was introduced as part of the team and noted ongoing community overdose-response efforts and distributed information about overdose-response box locations in the county.
Roberts said the collaborative will meet in March, then again in May and July, and that the health department has already identified a parent and caregiver representative. She asked county officials and community partners to serve on the group and to help remind parents to return permission slips.
Ending: The court did not take formal action on Planet Youth at this meeting; Roberts asked only for county engagement in the collaborative and the court offered no motion related to the program during open session.
