October is National Medicine Abuse Awareness Month: CADCA Provides Prevention Resources

October 6, 2017

October is National Medicine Abuse Awarness Month (NMAAM).  Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) and Prevent MedAbuse offers an Online Rx Abuse Prevention Toolkit on that contains facts, strategies and tools to prevent and reduce teen Rx medicine abuse in your community. This newly revised toolkit is based on CADCA’s Seven Strategies for Effective Community Change. Incorporating these strategies will help you formulate, modify and implement your prevention and intervention strategies.

How to Use the Toolkit:

• Prevention Strategies: See the Seven Strategies for Effective Community Change in action.
• Facts & Tools: Review the latest facts on this drug abuse challenge. Discover how to conduct an Rx abuse community assessment. Check out the Sample Logic Model. See how this information gets translated into Sample Intervention Maps.
• Other Resources: Learn about information and tools that can make your programs and interventions successful, including share tools that you can place on your website, Facebook or e-mail signature blocks.
• Success Stories: View Rx prevention at work. Check out the video presentations from CADCA coalitions nationwide that are experiencing Rx medication prevention success.

You can also get involved in Medicine Abuse Awareness Month by joining CADCA’s campaign:

• Register for the Dose of Prevention Challenge: Join community organizations and individuals around the country to spur discussions in your community to find solutions to this complex problem.
• Grassroots Media Kit: Amplify your medicine abuse prevention messages using CADCA’s Grassroots Media Kit. This Kit provides several tools to help you plan and promote your National Medicine Abuse Awareness Month activities.
• Share Tools: Download graphics and banners to spread the word about National Medicine Abuse Awareness Month this October.

Helpful Materials you can Download:

• Fact Sheets, Presentations, and Brochures about medicine abuse
• Preventing Teen Cough Medicine Abuse: A Parent’s Guide
• Checklist to help plan a town hall meeting
• “Stopping Cough Medicine Abuse in your Community” video to show at an event

“Prescription drug abuse is an epidemic that requires more than one strategy or tactic. It’s going to take a comprehensive approach that employs multiple strategies to create population-level reductions to this problem,” notes General Arthur Dean, the Chairman and CEO of CADCA. 

View the Toolkit at PreventMedAbuse.org or see more about CADCA’s NMAAM campaign.