Katie Capelli, Epidemiologist in the Office of Health Crisis Response at the Delaware department of Health and Social Services, and Scott Michael, founder of The C.A.U.S.E, – The Collective Action Urging Social Evolution, and one of his youth production editors, Adam Hubert, discussed their MyReasonsWhy campaign, a statewide initiative working to empower teens to use their influence to inspire others to live a positive, drug-free life. Continuing an earlier conversation, Ms Capelli discussed how her office seeks out pro-active programming to combat health emergencies, including growing drug and opioid addiction, they are trying to prevent youth from first trying it. She spoke of the way kids are targeted by suppliers with brightly colors, emojis and social media, and how, with the added stress of the COVID isolation, drugs are also a way of self-medicating.
Mr. Michael explained that MyReasonWhy encourages youth to discover their positive goals and purposeful actions, the healthy ways they relieve stress, and ask them to share them with their peers. He notes it’s an empowering campaign, it builds life-ling coping skills. To encourage the practice they partnered with local groups, sponsoring workshops and video competition. Mr Michael’s goal was to teach the five ‘A-ha’s of influence, that every action makes a difference, every action ‘ripples,’ there’re no ‘neutral,’ actions are ‘contagious’ and we all have our own personal actions. They asked their participants to post their ‘Reason Why,’ Mr Hubert described his role in helping edit the entries.
For more information visit CausetheWorld.com and MyReasonWhyDE.com