Social Media and Prevention Programs

Learning how to use social media in anti-drug programs was one of the tracks offered to participants at this week's CADCA National Leadership Forum - the nation's largest training conference for community coalition activists and substance abuse professionals. I was invited to kick-off the track today with an overview of social media and its possible uses in prevention campaigns. Subsequent sessions in the track were devoted to the nuts and bolts of creating blogs and podcasts.

My presentation included an overview of social media, social networks and mobile applications - primarily SMS. Over 200 people showed up for the presentation on a snowy, sleety, icy morning. If I had to pick the biggest hit of the presentation, it was the Cingular txt2connect program to teach parents how to text message with their kids. As regular monitoring of your children is one of the cornerstones of drug use prevention efforts, I asked how many people had heard of ANY drug prevention programs that had used text messaging to facilitate these behaviors: two hands went up. I suspect those numbers will increase over the coming months. A special note of thanks to Lynette Webb whose photos paired with quotes are featured on several slides.

CADCA has set up a blog for the conference (their first ever) staffed by 'coalition journalists' and is creating podcasts as well. A Cyber Cafe allows participants to try out their new skills at blogging and explore other types of social media. A special handout lists a 'Top Ten Tech Tasks' to get involved with the Forum including commenting on a blog entry and taking pictures with your cell phone and uploading them to a photo album at the blog. Now that's planning an immersion experience seriously!

Comments

[Sue Stine]

Thanks for your great presentation Craig--I know it helped our coalition leaders understand that they can and should create and disseminate prevention messages using the new media that are available to them. We've already had several groups begin new blogs and the interest in our technology track workshops has been terrific. Thanks for sharing your expertise and inspiring action among our coalitions!
Sue Stine
Manager, Dissemination and Coalition Relations
CADCA's National Coalition Institute

[lynetter]

Hi Craig,
I'm Lynette, she of the slides. Google sends me an alert to let me know when anyone links to my Flickr set, which is how I found your post.

Just wanted to say how pleased I am to have been able to help, even inadvertantly, with your efforts. It's a really big issue & something I support. Good luck. :-)