Several Kentucky universities and colleges have come together with the Kentucky Distillers Association for the launch of a new initiative to reduce drug and alcohol abuse on campus.

The Kentucky Coalition for Responsible Alcohol and Substance Misuse, Education or Race may well help higher education providers take an individual approach in keeping their students safer.

More of that in tonight's medical news.

The goal of the coalition is to promote healthy and safe campus environments, right?

So we fit into that framework of the drug free and safe campus community.

We want to make sure that we are teaching behaviors that set students up for success.

Some of those behaviors are decreasing the risk, right involved with alcohol consumption.

And so we're looking at teaching alcohol responsibility, decreasing impaired and drinking and driving and substance misuse education.

Although we are housed at the University of Kentucky, we are a partnership amongst 11 colleges and universities spread throughout the great Commonwealth of Kentucky.

When we were developing the program, we took into consideration that the unique characteristics that every institution possess, right?

So where they're located, they're student population as well as their budget will determine their type of programing.

The needs of one campus is very different than the needs of another campus.

And so there's not this magic recipe that I can put out there and and solve the problem.

However, in that that moment, we've got to work with the institutions directly.

They need to be at the table.

They need to drive the needs so that we have everybody there telling us this is what I'm seeing on my campus, this is what I'm looking for.

They do have the autonomy to select what best meets the new needs of their students.

So some may consider doing targeted workshop, campaign awareness and other opportunities, mocktail events, different opportunities.

But again, that's going to be based on what's most beneficial to their student population and their stakeholders.

We're going to be meeting regularly.

We're going to be doing a shared assessment so we can understand what are what are the behaviors like on all of our campuses, respectively.

How do we work together to meet those needs to reduce the harms around substance misuse on our campuses?

So a shared survey is a big piece of that to help us understand the problem.

And then from there to provide the training and the support and resources for the schools involved.

We also will provide some financial resources for those schools to create a strategic plan based on those data points, but then have money to implement that strategic plan.

Since a lot of schools do not have additional resources for health promotion work and or substance misuse prevention work.

When you know better, you do better, right?

And if we think once I go to college, I have the leeway and the freedom to just be to explore, to engage in things, we don't necessarily make great choices.

Right.

And so we want to give students those skills to be responsive in their behavior, responsible in the selection of the choices that they make.

But also, once you know better, share that that knowledge with other people.

And so that's, again, when we talk about student engagement, that's how we'll get students engaged.

We'll teach them about bystander training, how to advocate for themselves and others, but also how to be a part of the solution and not necessarily the problem that.