Empowering youth. Empowering families.
Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida (BGCNF) aims to offer a comprehensive, multi-pronged initiative known as the SMART Moves Program to more than 3,000 Club members in Duval County to prevent youth from using or taking harmful substances, specifically Opioid drugs.
BGCNF extends our heartfelt thanks to the City of Jacksonville for generously funding the Boys & Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida’s SMART Moves Program. Your support, through the 2023-2024 Opioid Settlement Proceeds Grant managed by the Office of Opioid Abatement, Jacksonville Fire & Rescue Department, has been instrumental in making this program possible.
About the SMART Moves Program
SMART stands for Skills Mastery and Resilience Training. The SMART Moves Program is a research-based prevention and education suite of programs and modules for youth ages 6 to 18. It aims to help youth build resilience and lifestyle skills to make informed decisions about their health, leading to positive health outcomes. The program comprises two (2) distinct parts:
Part I: SMART Moves: Featuring a suite of five modules focused on various health and wellness issues as well as additional gender-specific components to support specific growth opportunities to meet Boys' and Girls' Clubs' critical measures of success, including Academic Success, Good Character & Citizenship, and Healthy Lifestyles. The five core modules include:
- SMART Moves: Core
- SMART Moves: Emotional Wellness
- SMART Moves: Healthy Relationships
- SMART Moves: Nicotine
- SMART Moves: Substance Use
There are also four (4) additional supporting gender and age-specific lessons so Club members can gain further knowledge and skills in areas of specific importance to them and the community. These include:
- SMART Girls
- KidzSmart
- Passport to Manhood
- Journey's Paths to Adulthood
Part II: L.E.A.D. (Law Enforcement Against Drugs & Violence): A 10-week evidence-based anti-drug and anti-violence curriculum focusing on risks and healthy alternatives through interactive, evidence-based, tested, and proven curriculum ("Too Good for Drugs and Too Good for Violence”), which explicitly links risk factors to social and emotional challenges.
All Club members will engage in both programming parts through age-appropriate discussions and role-playing. Each component reflects best practices to help youth build self-esteem and self-confidence, develop assertiveness, strengthen decision-making skills, and practice resilience and refusal skills. Youth can also develop specific character traits, learn about leadership behaviors, and learn how a healthy lifestyle, proper nutrition, exercise, and other positive choices can make a difference in a successful future.
Program Curriculum Specifics
SMART Moves: Core is a targeted program that builds the foundational social-emotional and health skills to help youth make healthy decisions. People with better social-emotional skills report participating in fewer risky behaviors, including substance use. As part of the Core lesson plan, Club members learn about goal-setting, effective communication, refusal skills, and critical thinking about media messages. Youth must first be introduced to these foundational skills to practice them in the context of this module's sessions on substance use.
SMART Moves: Emotional Wellness focuses on positive coping strategies that build three cognitive-behavior skills that are most linked to helping youth avoid negative thought patterns and behaviors. These skills are self-regulation, impulse control, and stress management. Participating youth will build a practical toolbox for self-management and coping. People with better social-emotional skills report participating in fewer risky behaviors, including substance use.
SMART Moves: Healthy Relationships is a module to help youth learn about themselves and personal boundaries (and identify their own) while developing skills to build healthy relationships. After participating in these lessons, youth will be able to: - Describe various interpersonal relationships - Identify the characteristics of healthy and unhealthy relationships - Demonstrate characteristics of healthy communication in relationships - Apply decision-making and refusal skills to manage conflict in relationships - Apply decision-making and refusal skills to make healthy behaviors.
SMART Moves: Nicotine aims to influence attitudes and teach essential skills, so youth make healthy decisions about nicotine, e-cigarettes/vapes. At completion, youth will be able to: - Describe the health risks associated with using products that contain nicotine - Describe how using products that contain nicotine can impact their goals - Describe how media and peers influence a person's use of products that contain nicotine - Apply decision-making and refusal skills to using products that contain nicotine.
SMART Moves: Substance Use aims to influence attitudes and teach essential skills so youth can make healthy decisions about substance use overall. After completing the module, youth will be able to: - Describe the health risks associated with substance misuse - Describe how substance misuse can impact their goals - Describe how media and peers influence a young person's views on substance use - Apply decision-making and refusal skills to substance misuse.
SMART Girls: This specific curriculum is designed for girls in three age brackets (8-10, 11-13, 14-18) to provide opportunities to develop leadership skills, confidence, and independence in a safe environment where girls can be authentic, honest, and candid when expressing feelings about their mind, body, and community. By instilling the values of integrity, self-discipline, and mutual respect, SMART Girls will help enhance the quality of life for female Club members. In addition to physical wellness.
KidSmartz: A child safety program that aims to prevent abductions by teaching children (primarily in grades K-5) to recognize safety risks, learn about self-protection strategies, and empower them to practice safe behaviors and report anything suspicious. The program leverages tips, printable activities, quizzes, games, and videos. KidSmartz was created by the child safety experts at the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
Passport to Manhood: This rites-of-passage program for boys focuses on developmental needs of boys ages 8-12 and 13-17 with lessons to help them better understand and traverse the obstacles and roadblocks they may face on their road to men. Lessons focus on the most common challenges and leverage research-backed information to help male Club members learn to act more responsibly. Lessons include Understanding Manhood; Self-Esteem and Identity; Values in Personal Decision-Making; Academic Success; Responses to Authority; Relationships with Girls; Fatherhood and the Family; Employment and Careers; Diversity; Cooperation and Conflict; and Personal Leadership/Community Responsibility.
Journey's Paths to Adulthood: A targeted identity exploration program designed to help youth ages 10-14 better navigate their adolescent journey to emerge as strong, healthy young adults. Lessons aim to help youth reflect on their sense of self and help with identity development through various interactions and experiences. Club members can safely explore their identity, including race, ethnicity, and gender, and reflect on relationship questions and other topics to build essential social-emotional skills as they grow towards adulthood.
L.E.A.D: A 10-week component of the SMART Moves program that focuses on anti-drug and anti-violence messaging through interactive, evidence-based, tested, and proven curricula ("Too Good for Drugs and Too Good for Violence"). Lessons help youth gain more awareness about the adverse effects of alcohol, tobacco, and other drugs as well as build further resistance to their use. In addition, lessons support mental and physical well-being and aim to reduce youth risks for "Adverse Childhood Experiences," which can lead to poor decision-making. Programming builds on the SMART Moves core lessons to reinforce and promote positive behavior and help Club members gain more confidence using skills/tools. Recognized by the National Registry of Evidence-Based Programs and Practices, the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration, and the Institute of Education Services' What Works Clearinghouse, the curricula include lessons on Goal Setting; Decision-Making and Effective Communication; Anger Management; Media Literacy; Conflict Resolution and Pro-Social Bonding.
Program Reach and Staffing
The BGCNF SMART Moves Program will be offered at 45 Duval County Clubs (sites) serving 3,330 students daily. The year-long program will occur after school and over the summer. SMART Moves uses a team approach that involves Club staff, peer leaders, parents, and community representatives.
The main SMART Moves sessions will be facilitated by trained Health and Nutrition Youth Development Professionals (YDPs). BGCNF will also collaborate with the Jacksonville Sheriff's Office to deliver the L.E.A.D. programming to six (6) Clubs in Duval County areas with the highest crime rates. The hope is that by collaborating with local law enforcement, the impact will be more evident by having educators provide first-hand knowledge regarding the dangers of drugs and violence - from giving real examples of issues related to the use of opioids, including addressing crime rates and other challenges in the local community.
Based on the size of those Clubs, they will have one (1) L.E.A.D.-trained Jacksonville Sheriff's Officer and one (1) Youth Development Professional (YDP) for every 30 Club members, which will maintain BGCNF's mandatory 20:1 adult-to-student ratio. Additionally, if certain Club members require more engagement, wrap-around services from BGCNF will be available and offered to ensure more personalized interventions.
Program Results & Supporting Community Goals
SMART Moves and L.E.A.D. research data show that programming positively impacts students. L.E.A.D. reports that aer completing its program, youth participants affirm developing valuable skills for making healthy choices, building positive friendships, developing self-efficacy, communicating effectively, and resisting negative peer pressure and influence.
As surveys, assessments, and journals are a part of programming, BGCNF can gauge understanding and acceptance of the information and predict that the results should mirror research and results from programming in other communities. Specifically, student participants will develop valuable skills for making healthy choices, building positive friendships, developing self-efficacy, communicating effectively, resisting negative peer pressure and influence, and preventing drug use. Data shows that programming positively impacts youth and there is a reduction in the likelihood of choosing violence or substance use.
Supporting Broader Goals BGCNF believes that offering SMART Moves and L.E.A.D. is a positive step to support other county and state efforts aimed at preventing tweens and teens from ever considering the use of cigarettes, alcohol, opioids, or other harmful substances.
Executing this two-tiered program will support and complement other county and state harm reduction efforts to prevent teens from ever considering the use of opioids (as well as other harmful substances) and will effectively achieve the following local goals:
· Support efforts to discourage or prevent opioid use and misuse
· Support efforts to prevent or reduce opioid-related harms, including overdose deaths
· Support efforts in the community to provide leadership, planning, coordination, facilitation, training, and technical assistance to abate the opioid epidemic
· Support opioid abatement research
· Provide additional support to prevent or dissuade the use of other harmful substances, which could be contributing factors to substance abuse, mental health issues, and other issues (i.e., crime)
Summary The BGCNF SMART Moves Program comprises various research-based curricula to address prevention opportunities as outlined in the grant application on file at the BGCNF corporate offices.
The curricula include:
· Year-round - Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA) SMART Moves Curricula
February 1 – May 10 and August 12 – September 30, 2024 – All 45 Sites
· Ten (10) week interactive L.E.A.D. Program
February 26 – May 3, 2024 – All 45 Sites (6 will have JSS Officers)
During 2024, BGCNF's SMART Moves prevention programs will be executed weekly to 3,330 youth upon contract award through September 30, 2024, during the afterschool and summer service days.
The youth-to-adult ratio in all Club classrooms will be 20:1.
Given that this approach has been proven to positively support harm reduction objectives in other communities BGCNF believes expansion of the SMART Moves programming in Duval will equate to youth having a better understanding of the downstream effects of drugs in their community as well as seeing a reduction of youth using drugs.
For more information about this program contact:
Ms. Angie Dawson, Director of Wrap Around Services
Bosy & Girls Clubs of Northeast Florida
904.913.8100
When two organizations work together to face one of our nation’s most pressing health concerns – the opioid crisis – we can have a lasting impact and safeguard the health of an entire generation of kids. Weaving prevention and intervention into a foundation where young people and their families meet gives kids and teens the important opportunity to make meaningful connections with positive role models. Below are comprehensive resource guides to help Club leaders and staff initiate conversations about the continuum of substance use, while equipping you with the knowledge to address addiction. The guide will help you understand risk factors and warning signs, as well as the importance of personalizing strategies based on the needs of the community, schools, parents and youth . To effectively turn the tide on the opioid epidemic, we need action, collaboration and unity. We need communities that are prepared to meet the needs of families and their kids with open arms, and to help them adapt to those needs as circumstances change. That is why we are so proud to partner with Boys & Girls Clubs of America to present this critical resource guide – one that highlights the need for a holistic, high-quality youth development approach to promoting substance use prevention. As an organization that helps parents whose sons or daughters are struggling with substance use, we understand the need to empower families with information, support and guidance. By bringing together our joint expertise in the health and well-being of kids, we can ensure a brighter future for our nation’s youth.
LOCAL RESOURCES
Duval Health Department Resources: https://duval.floridahealth.gov/newsroom/2023/05/dohduval-naloxone-pressrelease-05122023.html
Drug Free Duval: https://www.drugfreeduval.org/
NATIONAL RESOURCES
Overdose Prevention Strategy: https://www.hhs.gov/overdose-prevention/