bp_problemidentification

Prevention File · Summer 2001· San Diego County Edition

Prevention File is a publication of The Silver Gate Group

PROGRESS..ALONG THE..BORDER

By Rick McGaffigan, Saul Cano, Avelino Jiminez and Kim Herbstritt

YOUNG PEOPLE HAVE CONSIDERED IT A "RITE OF PASSAGE" FOR DECADES: crossing the border into Mexico to drink. The attraction? Mexico's minimum drinking age of 18 combines with inexpensive alcohol—not to mention the fact that enforcement of the minimum drinking age was not really a priority for police in the border towns drawing hordes of underage partygoers.

But rising concerns on both sides of the border regarding the health,safety, and economic problems related to drug use, drug trafficking, and heavy alcohol consumption by young people led to a binational effort in 1997 called the San Diego/Tijuana Border Project (see Prevention File, Vol.12, No.3, Summer 1997).

The Border Project is a coordinated effort of the county of San Diego and the Institute for Public Strategies. It focuses on reducing alcohol and other drug problems along the entire US-Mexican border through a collaborative, binational system to develop and support public health approaches to prevention..

Since its start the project has worked to reduce cross-border teen and binge drinking in the San Diego-Tijuana region through the formation of a policy-focused, public health, prevention model that can work along the Southwest border.

"Cross-border drinking issues are an important place to begin this binational public health work. Since alcohol is a legal product, groundwork had already been laid in terms of existing regulations and policies that can be examined and then either adapted or discarded in favor of new, more effective policies," says James Baker, executive director of the Institute for Public Strategies (IPS).

However, the project was challenged from the outset by the complexity of the cross-border drinking problem, including two languages, several cultures, and the many layers of federal, state and local government agencies on both sides of the border. Longtime residents in the border region recognize the existence of a US culture, a Mexican culture, and a so-called border-culture that is hybrid of both.

"This complex cultural character, as well as the long-standing cross-border drinking troubles, had long contributed to the myth in the San Diego region that the situation was hopeless. Indeed, when the project began, the cynical verdict that 'these problems will never be solved' was heard on both sides of the border," says Baker.

IPS and its partners decided early on to use an environmental model that takes into account the social, physical, economic, and cultural factors that contribute to problems, and involves many agencies and individuals from both the US and Mexico.

"Our goal was to produce early reductions in problems to provide the project with visibility and legitimacy, while maintaining a steady, patient, long-term strategy, realizing that complex problems in a complex social environment wouldn't be solved by short-term or simple solutions," says Baker.

According to Baker, binational collaboration has been the key to creating positive change in the border region. The Project's major accomplishment has been galvanizing the interest of the community, policy makers, law-enforcement personnel and journalists around alcohol issues. Those early accomplishments created a public understanding that the broader, intractable alcohol and other drug problems that have permeated the border region can be solved.

"The initial successes of this project, which were corroborated by scientific survey data, provide the foundation for our vision of what the entire US-Mexican border community could become. This vision depends on maintaining a focus on economic development and higher health and safety standards that will reduce the alcohol and other drug problems that have plagued the region," says Baker.

The Border Project Model

The Border Project design incorporates an environmental prevention model that is driven by policy change. The primary tools employed were community organizing, media advocacy, data collection, and community/law enforcement partnerships. This model can be illustrated as five interlocking circles; the nucleus represents the synergistic effect of all the components working in unison to achieve the defined environmental strategy.

In partnership with IPS, the Maryland based Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation has conducted the evaluation of the Project.

"The real-time sharing of data has been instrumental in the Project's early success. The active interchange between scientific data collection and on-the-street prevention work acts as a vehicle for identifying problems, designing appropriate interventions, measuring Project success, and then revising prevention approaches based on the data. Data collection is an ongoing Project component rather than a scorecard issued after completion," says Baker.

The initial challenge of the Border Project was to raise cross-border drinking problems higher on the public agenda. Early interventions in the Project centers substantially on law-enforcement activity that received high-visibility news coverage. Project staff worked closely with police officials to craft a law enforcement component called Operation Safe Crossing.

The action at the border, which involved public health workers, elected officials, youth volunteers, parents, and police officers working side by side in two countries, became a magnet for television news.

"The law-enforcement-community mix of Operation Safe Crossing became a vehicle to showcase the survey-identified problem components, and to provide authentic voices from the community with opportunities to plant the seeds for later policy change," says Baker.

Many of the Project;s initial successes coincided with the Operation Safe Crossing intervention's media coverage, such as policy changes in Mexico that reduced bar-front advertising, eliminating free drinks and cheap drink specials, and implemented responsible beverage service training for bar owners and servers.

At the start, Project staff focused on enforcement and news making, working with a handful of community collaborators. But Baker says that lasting solutions require complex community changes.

"Parallel to enforcement and media work, IPS has been laying a community-based framework for enduring policy change on both sides of the border through the ongoing expansion of a strong, increasingly formal, binational policy coalition."

Binational Policy Council

IPS has been instrumental in the creation of the Binational Policy Council. BPC work groups operate independently on specific policy goals on both sides of the border, as well as collectively to establish a long-range public health and safety vision for the border community.

"The BPC is a model for international community organizing, and is designed to be an umbrella organization to formulate and promote recommendations to policy makers in both countries. The success of this group depends upon the use of research and media advocacy to implement its recommendations," says Baker.

In Tijuana, the BPC organized a community alcohol policy march in October 2000. Over 250 people wound their way from the downtown commercial zone to City Hall, where they presented the mayor with over 1,000 signatures on a petition supporting of the following recommendations:

Eliminate after-hour permits for bars and clubs
Close bars at 2:00 am, so they are in line with California closing times
Create a citizen's advisory board for all new alcohol licenses

The march received extensive television media coverage on both sides of the border. Maria Antonieta Olvera, prevention coordinator of Tijuana-based Isealud, who led the march, said:"We are continuing to build broad community support for alcohol reform to create a safer community through policy change for Tijuana residents."

In San Diego, BPC developed the following recommendations that it plans to present to the San Diego City Council:

Outlaw alcohol promotions that encourage minors to drink in Mexico
Regular and consistent enforcement of underage alcohol laws on the US side of the border for returning teen drinkers
Enhanced public health and safety standards in the Border Safety Zone, a zoning region encompassing the high-traffic area used by border crossers.

BPC continues to support law enforcement operations at the border in the form of multijurisdictional driving-under-the-influence operation, establishment of a command post to process intoxication testing, and the addition of holding cells and transport vans, allowing officers to return to the streets rapidly.

But the Border Project is not primarily an enforcement-based project, though enforcement has played an early and important role. Rather, it's a public health project, with plans to open a public health facility at the border crossing. Plans, which have been approved by the San Diego County Board of Supervisors, call for a public health clinic, personal crisis support center, and a facility for alcohol and other drug screening and intervention.

The BPC has created an opportunity for community organizations, businesses, military, health departments, universities, and law enforcement agencies from both sides of the border to work together as never before. Expansion of the BPC to include coalitions from Mexican and US border states to address regional problems collectively is a goal of IPS. Collaboration along the US-Mexican border that incorporates this model can raise national attention to border issues among federal government officials in both countries," says Baker.

What's Next for the Border Project?

The Institute for Public Strategies has two major initiatives in the works to expand the work of the Border Project. They are:

A Border Public Health Communication Center to lead regional and binational news making. The plan is to focus attention on a broad range of border-area public health issues, including HIV, TB, environmental pollution, and related economic issues. Once in operation, the Center will provide training and technical assistance to coalitions along the border states and into the interior of Mexico. The Project plans to match up "sister" communities on both sides of the border.
A focus on pharmaceuticals and illicit drug issues through the same binational, community-based coalitions that currently are working on teen and binge drinking. The San Diego-Tijuana Alcohol Policy Coalition formed by this project will expand to the border regions in Arizona, New Mexico and Texas.

Rick McGaffigan, Saul Cano, Avelino Jimenez, and Kim Herbstritt are with the Institute for Public Strategies, San Diego, California.

back

Articles are copyrighted material, the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107 and The Berne Convention on Literary and Artistic Works, Article 10, news articles are made available without profit for research and educational purposes only. For more information go to: www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.