University/Schools Alliance Executive Meeting
June 8, 2011 @ 1:00 PM at CDAS Office

Attending:
Kristen Blanchard, SODAT Delaware
Howard Isenberg, Open Door, Inc.
Yvonne Nass, Parent Education Consulting
LTC Angela Showell, DNG
Lorie Tudor, DPNA

Staff Attending:
Roberta Gealt, Program Director
Mary Perno, Project Coordinator

Discussions:

DFC Grant-The grant, which is the only funding source for USA, will end September 30, 2011. We have not yet been able to identify other funding sources that look appropriate.

SFP-SIG-The sub-grantees have not been announced as of yet. The plan is to award4 implementation grants and 16 planning grants.

SAPT-BG-The awards from the Block Grant for youth services have not been announced yet either.

Underage Drinking Prevention Bill (HB70)-This bill is now amended, killing the civil liability clause, making community service mandatory, and increasing the fines from $100 - $500 to $1500 - $2500. It has been released from committee in the amended form. The session ends on June 30th. If the bill doesn't pass,it will need to be re-introduced in the next session. It was suggested that if the bill is re-introduced next year, the addition of a requirement of education for the adult charged might be added to the bill.

DEA Information Sharing-At the DDATA Meeting on June 7th, the guest speaker was Allison Muller from Children's Hospital of Pennsylvania (CHOP). She works in the Philadelphia Poison Control Center there, which responds to calls from Delaware and collects information from those calls. Marc Richman and Joe Hughes will be making some contacts in Delaware to identify sources of data which would indicate emerging drug trends. It is hoped that Delaware will be able to collect information from Emergency Departments and the Medical Examiner's Office which could be disseminated to a list of those who could use this information in their daily work. It will not be public information; it will be used as an early warning system. Howard Isenberg suggested that the information should also be distributed to First Responders to help them identify what they're dealing with in cases where symptoms are not what they expected. Treatment providers will get this information also.

Town Hall Meetings-Howard decided to hold off for now on his Town Hall Meeting. He wants to do it right and not rush in planning it.

Lorie Tudor told him that she would be more than happy to share information with Howard from her Town Hall Meetings. Lorie received seven applications for the mini grants, three of which are from Sussex County.

Lorie's next Town Hall Meeting will be on Monday, June 13th from 6:30-8:00 PM at the Claymont Community Center. They ask that you pre-register (dpnalorie@dca.net) and come for a free dinner from 5:30-6:30 PM. The featured speaker will be Beau Biden.

DSAMH Summer Institute-This year, some prevention workshops are being offered, but not many. It will be from July 25th-29th at the Embassy Suites in Newark.

Physician's Conference-Carol Pashman (carol@medicuscme.org) has never returned our phone calls about holding the Physician's Conference at Christiana Hospital.

Policy Summit-We are planning to hold the Policy Summit at Buena Vista in New Castle on Friday, September 23, 2011. Last year it was very successful.

What is the Agenda?-When USA initially received the DFC grant, it changed the nature of our group. What do we really want to do now? What is our domain? we started out as an underage drinking coalition. Drug use was added to the mission in order to apply for the DFC grant, and at some point related risk behaviors were also added.

Lorie thinks that there's value for working without ties or mandates (i.e., grant requirements) and it's a good thing. Some members would be free to lobby, but not everyone because of their connections with other agencies.

As of October 1st, we won't have any restrictions, or funding, but will can still receive updates from CADCA and ONDCP, as they are available to all coalitions.

USA has seen less and less participation from the schools in the Board and decision-making. Our role without the DFC grant could still be to provide information to the parents through the schools, however. There are also lists of resources available at www.udel.edu/delawaredata.

Kristen asked what is the cost of the bandwidth without UD to keep the USA web site up. Roberta said that the website is basically free, but webmaster (Mary Perno) would not be connected with USA without funding to keep the website up to date. It was suggested that Facebook would be the only way to go since we could afford the "free" site. We would still need someone to maintain it and update the page. USA already has a Facebook page in place. We just need more people to "like" us so it is more accessible.

We should ask the schools if they believe that USA is still useful to them.

Howard believes that USA should continue to work, even without funding to help in the schools.

Therefore, as we see it right now, USA will continue working on alcohol, drugs and some risk behaviors.

The next meeting has been changed to TUESDAY, JULY 19TH AT 1:00 PM at the CDAS office.