The Consumer Healthcare Products Association (CHPA) recently held a forum, which brought together drug prevention and parenting experts to discuss how to educate teens about drug abuse and ultimately prevent adolescents from engaging in risky activities, such as over-the-counter (OTC) cough medicine abuse.

1. 1
“Inside the Teen Brain: Is There an App for That?”
Moderated by Emily Skor, Vice President of Communications and Executive Director
of the CHPA Educational Foundation
September 29, 2015

2. PARENTS
ATTITUDE
TOWARD
BEHAVIOR
ACCESS
to the
PRODUCT
TEENS
AGES
14-19
Changing Teen Attitudes
Via the drivers that impact their decision not to abuse

3. 2
3
4
5
6
7
2006 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014
AVERAGE
12th Grade
10th Grade
8th Grade
3.2%
5.4%
Abuse rates are the lowest they’ve been since we began tracking this behavior
DXM Abuse Mitigation Successes
Prevalence of Teen-Reported Abuse
SOURCE: Monitoring the Future Study
3

4. • Alka-Seltzer Plus Cold
• Coricidin
• Delsym
• Dimetapp DM
• Mucinex DM
• Robitussin
• Sudafed cough medicines
Products Containing DXM
• TheraFlu
• Triaminic
• Tylenol Cough/Cold
• Vicks Formula 44
• Vicks NyQuil and Dayquil
• Zicam
• Store brands

6. Slang Terms

7. Darby Fox, Child & Adolescent Family Therapist
Inside the Teen Brain

8. Myths of Teenage Activity
• Myth: Raging hormones cause teenagers to “go crazy”.
• Myth: Teens just need to grow up. They are rebellious and
oppositional because they want to be difficult.
• Myth: Growing up requires shutting out your parents. They
are the enemy.

10. Four Activities of Adolescence
1. Novelty seeking
2. Social interaction
3. Heightened emotional intensity
4. Creative exploration

11. Figure: The Teenage Brain by Frances E. Jensen, MD with Amy Ellis Nutt (pg. 58)
The young brain has more excitatory synapses
than inhibitory synapses.

13. Family Bonding
“Family bonding is feelings of closeness and intimacy toward
one’s parents, as measured by appraisals of communication,
parental monitoring, parental involvement and joint family
activities. Adolescents who use drugs regularly think that their
parents do not care about their actions, and consequently,
consider the family to be less important to them then their
friends.”
“Adolescent assessment of feeling close to mother and/or father,
feeling cared about, loved and wanted by family members are
important factors protecting against substance use and other
health risk behaviors.”
Denton & Kampfe (1994) Kuendig and Kuntsche (2006) Resnick et al, 1997

14. Sean Clarkin, Executive Vice President of Research and External Relations
Preventing Teen Abuse of DXM

15. Contents
• DXM abuse: Who? Why? How?
• Prevention messaging
• Arriving at a DXM prevention strategy

16. Who? Why? How?
• DXM abuser is more likely to be male, 18-25 years old – though
initiation and early use occurs in teen years (12-17)
• Polydrug / alcohol user – for whom DXM is a high of “last resort”, when
they can’t get anything else
• Recreation to some extent – but also escape, self-medication
• Not a “social drug” (like alcohol or weed); generally by oneself, or with
one or two friends

17. Prevalence
• Relatively low prevalence – in 2011, when our DXM prevention
campaign began, 4.4% of teens in 8th, 10th and 12th grades (combined)
reported abuse in the past year*
• About a third of teens reported having friends who abuse DXM
(compared to 73% for marijuana)**
• Implication: Prevention messaging needs to be narrowly targeted to
the potential abuser, in order to avoid educating “unexposed” kids
*Monitoring the Future 2011, U. of Michigan
** Partnership Attitude Tracking Study 2011

18. Prevention Messaging
• Tracking data going back to 1975 show that most important beliefs
correlating with teen substance use are perceptions of risk and “social
disapproval”
• Experience shows that risk messaging has to be credible, and that
disapproval has to focus more on the behavior and its consequences
than on the user
• Peer to peer” messaging can be an effective way of being credible --
and respectful of the teen’s sense of self and his/her peer group

19. Getting to a DXM prevention strategy
• Extensive qualitative research in 2011, in three different cities, probing teen (and parent) attitudes
and behaviors. Talked with teens who were familiar with DXM abuse; some had used / had friends
who used
• Teens talked about the physical risks of DXM abuse as focused on the unpleasant consequences:
– “Sloppy”
– “Miserable high”
– “Got sick and threw up”
• The social consequences they identified were related in important ways to these physical
consequences:
– “Acting like jerks”
– “Out of control”
– “Nobody wants to be around them”

20. Getting to a DXM prevention strategy
• We also tested a variety of risk and social disapproval messages (one or two
sentence “core concepts”) for credibility and persuasiveness
• Challenging – because physical risks are not as severe as those for other drugs, such
as meth or prescription pain relievers
• Zeroed in on message that combined risk (of nausea and vomiting) with social
disapproval:
The friends I know who use cough medicine to get high get so sloppy--
throwing up and acting like jerks-- that nobody wants to be around them.

21. The Messaging Challenge
• How to bring this strategy to life in a way that:
– Meets the target teen where he/she is (primarily online), but does not “spill” to
unexposed kids
– Is credible
– Is engaging, share-able with like-minded teens
– Successfully influences those perceptions of risk and social disapproval that we
know correlate with early use

22. Kinney Edwards, Executive Creative Director
DXM Labworks

25. Kareemah Abdullah, Director of the National Community Anti-Drug Coalition
Institute & Vice President of Training Operations
Agents of Change: Engaging Youth in Prevention

26. CADCA
• Founded in 1992 as a recommendation from the President’s Drug
Advisory Council.
• Today, CADCA supports a comprehensive, data-driven approach to
prevent the use of illicit drugs, underage drinking, youth tobacco use,
and the abuse of medicines.
• CADCA represents more than 5,000 community coalitions nationally
and in 22 countries globally.

27. CADCA & CHPA Collaborate
Prevent Over-the-Counter Medicine Abuse
• Partners since 2006
• CHPA is the cofounder and sponsor of National Medicine Abuse Awareness Month
• CADCA 50 Challenge: Sparking community conversations in coalitions nationwide
• Dose of Prevention Award recognizes coalition innovation in OTC medicine abuse
prevention
• Training at CADCA’s National Leadership Forum
• CADCA and coalitions support the Preventing Abuse of Cough Treatments (PACT)
Act

28. Building Current and Future Change Agents!

29. National Youth Leadership Initiative (NYLI)
Vision:
A program of excellence to develop youth for effective
leadership in community coalitions.
Mission:
To strengthen skills and capacity of youth to influence positive
community change through a strategic planning process.
Motto:
“Youth led…Adult Guided”

30. NYLI Core Competencies

31. NYLI Core Competencies

32. The Social Development Model*
*Catalano, Hawkins, Kosterman and Newcomb (1996)

33. Empowerment Opportunities
Adapted from Search Institute’s 2005 Publication entitled “The Power of Youth and Adult Partnerships and Change Pathways for youth work”.

34. The Impact of the NYLI
Youth trained by the NYLI experienced an increase and significant change in the
following aptitudes:
• Leadership Competencies
• Community Organizing
• Problem-Solving Abilities
• Current and Future Civic Activism
• Civic and Political Engagement
• Youth-Adult Partnerships
Foster-Fishman, Mortensen, Michigan State University (2010)

35. NYLI Impact on Youth Leadership,
Attitudes, Skills & Actions