News & Events
Much of our work involves measuring the difference others make. Getting involved and making our own difference is also an important part of who we are as individuals and as an organization.
MPI is proud to partner with the Coalition for a Safe and Healthy Arden Arcade (CSHAA) for their upcoming summit in March. The Sacramento County Coalition for Youth presents the 2020 Sacramento Marijuana Prevention Summit. Registration is now open!
The summit will feature keynotes from state and national experts, input from local leaders, and educational opportunities to continue the discussion regarding the impacts of recreational marijuana legalization on our community and our youth.
We are excited to have with us two amazing plenary speakers, Will Jones III and Joe Eberstein. Will Jones III serves as the Communications and Outreach Associate at SAM. He is an experienced speaker and community activist working on issues of social justice at the local and national level. Joe Eberstein works for the Center for Community Research Inc.; he is the Program Manager for the San Diego County (MPI) Marijuana Prevention Initiative.
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MPI will be providing trainings to both youth and staff at Urban Street Angels. The training will be on January 28th. A key mission of Urban Street Angels is supporting housing and job training programs for transitional-age homeless youth, to help them off the streets with a hand up.
Transitional-age youth are individuals between the ages of 18 and 25. Many have suffered from years of abuse, trauma, and tough conditions while living on the streets. The needs of this demographic, largely ignored by existing support services, guided our growth toward our current mission.
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As the CCR team continues to participate in the Addiction Treatment Starts Here: Community Partnerships learning collaborative, we are using system design tools to think differently about our work. Systems thinking requires looking at interrelated factors to understand their combined effects. One tool we’ve found to be very helpful is the Iceberg Model, which helps to examine events presented and the root of such systematic issues, related to an iceberg because much of the structure is hidden out of sight.
Our team led a focus group last year using the Iceberg Model to determine events, patterns, structures, and mental models regarding Opioid Use Disorder. An example includes:
- Event: What is happening at the surface level.
- An individual is overwhelmed when re-entering the system of care.
- Pattern: Similar events that have been taking place over time.
- The individual does not know how to build healthy relationships or feels loneliness
- Structures: What is causing the pattern (physical things, organizations, policies, rituals).
- There is a lack of mental health resources, limited access to harm reduction services, and limited hours at treatment facilities.
- Mental models: Attitudes, beliefs, morals, expectations, and values that allow structures to continue functioning as they are.
- There is stigma within jail or Medication Assisted Treatment facilities and a lack of understanding.
In this way of systematic thinking, you can see how various factors often build on one another and the need to explore these levels to promote positive change. From our example, feelings of being overwhelmed may by due to not knowing how to reach out and/or from the fear of encountering stigma, therefore we can focus on creating understanding relationships in our program.
Try using this tool in your next project! For more information, visit https://thinkjarcollective.com/tools/iceberg-systems-mapping-tool-to-identify-leverage-points-for-change/.
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A new local case of vaping-associated lung injury was confirmed on Wednesday, Jan. 8, by the County Health and Human Services Agency.
To date, 43 cases of vaping-associated lung injury have been reported among San Diego County residents, while an additional three cases are under investigation. While there have been no local deaths, all patients had to be hospitalized.
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San Diego's public school schools have filed suit against Juul Labs, Inc., the largest U.S. producer of e-cigarettes, accusing the company of deliberately marketing its vaping products to young people, effectively rolling back years of progress made by anti-smoking campaigns.
A 40-page complaint filed in San Diego Superior Court on behalf of the San Diego Unified School District on Tuesday alleges that Juul's product "disrupts the learning environment," causing an increase in student absences due to vaping-related illnesses and hurting the schools "by diverting funding away from learning toward educational campaigns, prevention, and treatment."
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