+ FOSTERING HEALTHY ATTITUDES TOWARDS ALCOHOL IN MURIHIKU

The way we do it: Healthy Families Invercargill takes a collective approach when it comes to helping create a community where the healthy choice is the easy choice. We are about thinking bigger, working together with the community and activating leadership at all levels to drive sustainable, healthy change. It's about working with local leaders to find local solutions.

DOING IT TOGETHER

ARE YOUR BLINDERS ON?

Parents often have blinders on when it comes to discussing the hard stuff with their children and with each other. 

Are Your Blinders On? is a tailored digital media strategy that has been created out of a collaborative approach by agencies charged with addressing alcohol harm, and is intended as an innovative way of reducing alcohol-related harm to youth living in Southland. 

A key aspect of this strategy is a social media campaign which challenges the assumptions and Southland preconceptions that adults have about teen drinking. While we use ‘real life’ quotes from parents, we  have made this ‘safe’ by using animated horses as our main characters. A horse with blinders on was selected because it is a strong image representing a lack of knowledge of, or turning a blind eye to, things going on in the periphery. 

Goals of the strategy: 

  • To encourage parents and caregivers of pre-teens or teenagers to communicate with each other about alcohol consumption at social events 

  • To encourage parents to communicate with their children about alcohol consumption and responsible drinking 

  • To create a memorable locally focused tailored digital media strategy that encourages communication ​​​​​​​

HEALTHY ATTITUDES TOWARDS ALCOHOL (HATA)

After the Community Alcohol Action group was set up in 2015, it soon became clear that further direction was needed if we were to make inroads in addressing the hazardous drinking culture in Invercargill. Which is where Healthy Attitudes Towards Alcohol comes in.

UNDERSTANDING OUR COMMUNITY

One of the main roles of Healthy Families Invercargill is to understand our community's needs. To this end, we work extensively with community organisations and champions to gather the voice of the community, and community insights, which are then used to inform decision making processes at high end level. Below are examples of the work we have done in this area.

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