Rockford program takes on underage drinking

ROCKFORD — A city-backed program is seeking to take the power out of peer pressure in the fight against underage drinking among Rockford’s middle and high school students.

Drug Free Rockford and Rockford Alcohol Free Teens have placed posters at Jefferson and Auburn high schools, Auburn’s freshman campus, Roosevelt Middle School, Rockford Environmental Sciences Academy and Barbour and Ellis elementary schools in what the agencies call a social-norms approach to prevention, meaning the program is aimed at attitudes about what is normal or acceptable behavior.

“A lot of the kids in Rockford have the perception that their peers are drinking alcohol, and that’s really not the case,” said Christopher Greenwood, community health and prevention coordinator in Rockford’s Human Services Department.

He said statistics supporting the program’s claims come from the Illinois Youth Survey, which is administered in all Rockford School District sixth, eighth, 10th and 12th grade classes every two years. The most recent year for which statistics are available is 2008. Greenwood said the 2010 survey is still in progress so final numbers haven’t been compiled.

Between the 2006 survey and 2008 survey, Greenwood said, the number of sixth-graders saying they has used alcohol within the past month decreased by 23 percent. For the same surveys and the same question, there was a 10 percent decrease for eighth-graders, an 11 percent increase for 10th-graders and a 7.25 percent decrease for 12th-graders.

He said the survey does not ask how many times alcohol was used in the past month.

Greenwood said the program’s message to the students is that their friends are not using alcohol to the extent they might think and that they don’t have to drink to fit in. “We want the kids to understand that perception isn’t everything,” Greenwood said. “They’re perceiving their peers as doing one thing when, in reality, they’re not doing it at all.”

He said the program also measures attitudes about alcohol use in a parents and guardians survey.

The program is paid for with part of Strategic Prevention Framework grant from the Illinois Department of Human Services and a Substance Abuse Prevention Program grant. Greenwood said he is seeking grants that could expand the program to all Rockford schools next year and, possibly, into other Winnebago County schools.

Staff writer Mike DeDoncker can be reached at 815-987-1382 or mdedoncker@rrstar.com.