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\u201cThe Healthy Voices Healthy Choices Coalition is located in Alexandria, Minnesota,\u201d said the coalition\u2019s coordinator Katie Strickler<\/strong>. \u201cWe are in the heart of lake country in the West Central part of the state, about two hours from the Twin Cities. Our city population is roughly 13,000 people; however, we have several surrounding rural communities just outside of city limits. With over 300 lakes in our county, we are a popular tourist destination and an attractive place for people to have lake homes and cabins. Our community puts a high value on education and investing in the future of our youth. We have a small town feel with big town opportunities.\u201d<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cOur lakes are a popular place for both youth and adults to be at during the summer and winter months,\u201d said Strickler. \u201cWhile our lakes are generally a positive thing for our community, they also bring on some challenges. This includes youth having unsupervised access to boats and fish houses. There is also a strong association between adult alcohol use and social gatherings out on the lake, a norm that our youth are then exposed to.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cOur coalition was formed in 2016 through a five-year \u2018Planning and Implementation\u2019 grant from the Minnesota Department of Human Services Behavioral Health Division,\u201d said Strickler. \u201cOne of the strategies that our coalition is most proud of is our conversation starter cards. We developed them as part of our campaign to encourage more conversations between parents and youth about substance use. The deck of cards includes four different categories of questions including: scenarios, action, reversal and general. The scenario cards include alcohol related situations that our young people may face. We wanted to include these because it helps the youth think about how they would handle that situation, and then also be able to talk through that with their parent. The action cards include activities that the parent and child can do together. The reversal questions turn the table and allow the child to ask the parent something. Finally, the general questions have a combination of alcohol-specific and basic questions that allow the parent and child to build their relationship.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe idea for the conversation starter cards came about after we did our strategic planning and looked at the data surrounding how many parents had talked to their child about the importance of not using alcohol,\u201d said Strickler. \u201cWe wanted to provide more opportunities for parents to talk with their child and make those conversations as genuine as possible. A committee of community members put the questions together. Once they were developed, we put together our plan for how they were going to be distributed. This included partnering with local businesses to hand them out or have them available at their front desk. We also distributed them during school and community events. Besides increasing conversations between parents and their children, this also allowed us an opportunity to share our message with local businesses who weren\u2019t familiar with the coalition\u2019s work. The cards were also popular with non-parent adults who interacted with youth, such as counselors and church group leaders.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cA key for our success with this strategy was to partner with local businesses to distribute the conversation cards,\u201d said Strickler. \u201cThis allowed for us to have a much larger reach beyond our coalition. It is also important to get feedback from youth when you are developing the questions. We tested these questions with students to make sure that they were realistic and something that they would actually talk about with their parent.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cThe Healthy Voices Healthy Choices Coalition is located in Alexandria, Minnesota,\u201d said the coalition\u2019s coordinator Katie Strickler. \u201cWe are in<\/p>","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":13518,"template":"","resource_type":[281],"drug_specific_issues":[],"action_to_do":[],"class_list":["post-17239","resource","type-resource","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","resource_type-coalitions-online"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n