Positive Community Norms (PCN) helps address community issues by focusing on positive, healthy norms and behaviors and reducing misperceptions around the use of alcohol and drugs. PCN is a research-based environmental strategy that is part of a larger approach to reducing alcohol and drug abuse in the community. Through positive messaging, it challenges and changes commonly held misperceptions about youth behaviors and beliefs regarding drug and alcohol use by publicizing accurate information about what youth are actually doing.
Steps to the Positive Community Norms process include gathering baseline data from students, parents and the community, educating the community about the project, developing positive messages and ways to communicate them, and evaluating how effective those messages are. The campaign focuses on Elizabethtown Area School District students, parents, school administration and staff, Elizabethtown College and the greater Elizabethtown community.
Your support of this initiative, called PAWS… and Think! here in Elizabethtown, helps us continue enhancing the lives of children and teens in our community: it’s about focusing on what our youth are doing right and sharing that information with members of the community to support the fact that the majority of our youth are making healthy choices.