BPHC Prepares to Launch New Prevention Campaign for BHS
This fall we are rolling out our new Burlington high school campaign that will focus on reducing youth initiation and early use of alcohol, cannabis with THC (marijuana), and tobacco/nicotine and normalize non-use while the brain is developing.
This time last year our Communications & Marketing Director, Evan Litwin, hit the pavement on Church Street after school, and went online, to ask Burlington youth for their input in order to develop our new youth substance prevention campaign. We hired 2 BHS student interns for the summer to help focus our campaign messaging and how to effectively share those messages with Burlington teens.
Following a series of surveys and focus group interviews, we’re excited to share our new health-centered campaign at the high school, BHS Elevate! We’ll continue working with students to imagine ways to elevate themselves, their peers, and their school or neighborhood communities.
Upcoming campaign messages will focus on the very real issues for youth related to stress and anxiety. The campaign will share ways to manage difficult feelings and self-regulate with healthy options. BHS Elevate will include info about how substance use in response to stress has negative consequences for their body and lives. The campaign aims to increase BHS students' confidence to offer healthy support to their friends and peers. In the next phase of the campaign, we’ll focus on vaping information, so stay tuned to hear more in our next newsletter.
And we aren’t the only ones excited about BHS Elevate’s potential. Evan recently welcomed a team of 5 UVM undergraduate seniors to work with him on the campaign as part of their Public Communications Capstone. Team Elevate will help us develop and roll out youth-appealing messaging at the school and on social media. They'll Work with experts in the fields of mental and public health, and assist with graphic and product design.
If you’re a business or individual that would like to support the work that BHS Elevate is doing, please connect with us so we can imagine what’s possible together.
