Fighting substance use through awareness and peer education

Vaping is rampant among L.A. students. According to the CDC, more than 30% of L.A. County high school students have reported using e-cigarettes. 

The Los Angeles Trust for Children’s Health is working with partner Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and funder California Community Foundation to educate and prevent substance use  among Los Angeles Unified students.  

“This is one of our most urgent initiatives,” said Robert Renteria, program manager for The L.A. Trust. “Whether it’s vaping tobacco or using marijuana, alcohol, methamphetamine or opioids, substances are a real threat to our student community —one that’s likely to have grown during the pandemic.” 

The Wellness & Adolescent Substance Use Prevention Project (WASUP) substance use prevention partnership includes Screening, Brief Intervention and Referral to Treatment (SBIRT) training and peer education by student health advocates from The L.A. Trust’s Student Advisory Boards.  

WASUP training for school-based healthcare professionals included a series of webinars discussing vaping and SBIRT. The  SBIRT project  — designed to increase the screening tool’s utilization in L.A. Unified Wellness Center clinics — was deployed at five such clinics, reaching nearly 2,700 students.  

Peer education  

 A toolkit for conducting a preliminary scan of the substance use situation at schools — Conducting a SBIRT Environmental Scan at Your School-Based Health Center — was published last year by Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and The L.A. Trust.  

The toolkit “reflects lessons learned by The L.A. Trust and CHLA during a multiyear initiative to integrate SBIRT into five school-based health centers across South Los Angeles. Funding for this project was provided by the California Community Foundation and the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation.”   

WASUP includes student health advocates and Student Advisory Board members like former Manual Arts High School student Melissa Riaz Reynolds, who is now in college.   

She said her favorite part of being a WASUP advocate was “presenting to the leadership class about underage drinking and making safe decisions.  

“It helped a lot with my personal life as most students are curious and like to experiment, so I am constantly surrounded by drugs or people who abuse drugs,” she said. “The WASUP project taught me how to handle certain situations and protect myself and those around me.” 

Eight new grants will drive The L.A. Trust mission

The Los Angeles Trust is proud to announce eight new grants from partners who understand the critical health-related needs and issues facing students in the Los Angeles Unified School District. Several of these partners came forward earlier in this school year to lend support to our mission.

Long-time partner Kaiser Permanente awarded a $500,000 grant over two years to fund three initiatives: Healthy Eating, Active Living (HEAL); our Oral Health Initiative; and the groundbreaking Data xChange.  HEAL is Kaiser Permanente’s multi-faceted, integrated strategy to achieve long-term sustainable reductions in obesity and related chronic illnesses; funds for the Oral Health Initiative will support education and dental screening for kindergarteners as well as parent and caregiver education; and the Data xChange funding will make it possible for us to integrate academic data with Wellness Center health data.  Kaiser Permanente’s beneficent support continues to be a mainstay of our work.

Another exciting development is the continuation of work on SBIRT coordination (Screening, Brief Intervention, and Referral to Treatment) at five Wellness Centers.  This is an impactful four-year grant from the California Community Foundation to Children’s Hospital Los Angeles, with which we partner to increase screenings and improve data collection. With the legalization of cannabis, and with vaping and drug use on the rise in our schools, this work is more important than ever.

DentaQuest Partnership for Oral Health Advancement (DentaQuest Partnership) has remained a major supporter this year, with three generous grants to support improvement of oral healthcare delivery in Los Angeles and beyond.  We received $125,800 for the Oral Health Initiative to increase our oral health policy advocacy, the oral health build-out of the Data xChange, and to increase student participation at the elementary school dental screenings we facilitate.  In addition, we received $111,226 to support our participation in DentaQuest Partnership’s Oral Health Progress and Equity Network, where our staff serves as a key connector for the growing national network’s infrastructure; and $12,900 for Executive Director Maryjane Puffer to participate in the Regional Oral Health Connection Team.  We’re thrilled to continue the groundbreaking work that DentaQuest Partnership has championed for many years, addressing the pervasive but entirely preventable chronic disease of tooth decay among children in the U.S.

Cedars-Sinai is also supporting the Data xChange build-out with a $25,000 grant.  We’re very pleased to partner for the second time with Cedars-Sinai, which continues to be a champion for healthy communities.

We’re delighted to be working again with Fu*k Cancer through a $40,000 grant to raise awareness about cervical cancer prevention through HPV vaccination campaigns.  This year the program will be enhanced by increased work with the Student Advisory Boards as well as social media support provided by Fu*k Cancer.  The Data xChange will play a key role in tracking vaccination rates.

The Ralph M. Parsons Foundation awarded The L.A. Trust a general operating capacity-building grant of $75,000.  This generous support will help us strengthen the organizational infrastructure as well as support youth development and the Data xChange.

The Capital Group Companies Charitable Foundation is another long-time supporter that recently granted The L.A. Trust general operating funds in the form of a $15,000 grant.