Pittsboro’s George Greger-Holt has worked for decades in Chatham County serving and supporting youth and youth programs. As the community outreach coordinator for Chatham Drug Free — a position he’s held since 2013 — Greger-Holt leads the organization’s educational efforts and programming and coordinates with CDF partners on a wide array of initiatives.
A 1977 graduate of Elmira College, Greger-Holt earned a masters of education from UNC-Chapel Hill. He worked in a variety of positions for Chatham County Schools from 1991 until his retirement from CCS in 2013. He’s been the recipient of numerous awards and recognition for his work, including the GlaxoSmithKline Lifetime Achievement Award for Student Health in 2010, the Margaret B. Pollard Outstanding Community Service Award in 2009, and the North Carolina Governor’s Academy for Prevention Professionals Award of Appreciation in 2007.
He has served on the boards of more than 40 local and state organizations, including Communities In Schools of Chatham County, and is a past chairman of the Chatham Education Foundation, Chatham County Together, the Juvenile Crime Prevention Council and the School Health Advisory Council.
You’ve been in Chatham County a long time. Can you talk about how your work in Chatham evolved and transitioned into your current role as coordinator for Chatham Drug-Free?
I came to Chatham County in 1984 as a youth substance use disorder clinician at the former public mental health center, Chatham Counseling Center. Prior to that, I had worked in the same position at the Northside Mental Heath Center in Chapel Hill. When I came to Chatham County, Perry Harrison, the Superintendent of Chatham County Schools, was interested in changing the substance use policy to make it less punitive and more rehabilitative. We worked together with several other youth service partners and community leaders to create a new policy that required youth caught in possession of or under the influence of alcohol or other drugs to have a substance use assessment. That was the beginning of a longstanding substance use prevention coalition, which evolved into what we now call Chatham Drug Free
In addition to working with the schools, I also saw students experiencing substance use issues in the clinics in Pittsboro and Siler City. As a result of that work and the newly approved policy, it became apparent that there was a need for some expertise in substance use issues to work directly in schools. Mr. Harrison then hired me as the Student Assistance Program specialist for the school district and from there, the program and I evolved, eventually demonstrating the need for a Director of Student Services, which was created by Dr. Ann Hart and to which I was hired. That position included responsibility over Safe and Drug Free schools among many other things. All during that time, I had a leadership position in the substance use prevention coalition called by different names but always focused on youth and prevention.
When I retired, the Coalition had secured a federal Drug Free Communities grant and I took a position as the Community Outreach Coordinator. The grant was able to bring Chatham Drug Free to a new level, funding several initiatives and providing substance use prevention education and environmental change to the community. When those funds ended, I continued to coordinate the Coalition as a community volunteer and until the recent receipt of a small grant, worked with very limited funding.
Can you explain CDF’s approach toward promoting and building what you all describe as “sustainability and cultural competence,” and why those practices (which include assessment, planning and implementation) are so important?
As a recipient of the Drug Free Communities grant, which Chatham County had in one form or another since 2005, Chatham Drug Free has used the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) Strategic Prevention Framework, an evidence-based blueprint for prevention efforts across the country. We use that Framework — assessment, capacity building, planning, implementation and evaluation with consideration of cultural competency and sustainability — to guide our work.
Assessment is done through a variety of methods and with the help of our community partners, especially the Chatham County Public Health Department and Chatham County Sheriff’s Office. Assessment helps us know which issues are bubbling to the surface here in Chatham and use that information to inform our planning and implementation.
For example, we ask youth about their perception of harmfulness of certain drugs. Perception of harmfulness — whether the youth believes that using the drug would be harmful to him, her or them — is predictive of future drug use. We actually found this with prescription medication. Youth reported low levels of perception of harmfulness, so the Coalition has embarked on a project to increase youth’s perception of harmfulness around prescription medication.
Cultural competency is important because what is an effective message for one culture might not resonate with another culture. Cultures we consider not only include race, but also gender, age, socioeconomic status and geography.
Finally, sustainability is extremely important in continuing our work regardless of funding streams. It’s a fact of life that funds come and go, and having a solid sustainability plan assures our initiatives live on beyond the Coalition. We have been fortunate to have committed and generous partners who have assumed operation of several of our initiatives. The Chatham County Sheriff’s Office, Pittsboro Police Department and Siler City Police Department, after an initial infusion of funding and Coalition support, have assumed the responsibility for the safe disposal of medication (drop boxes), which has become very successful.
Let’s take a look at a few of your key initiatives. How do CDF’s “Safe Homes” and “Operation Medicine Drop” work together to keep prescription drugs away from users for whom they’re not intended?
Safe Homes started as a way to get parents to talk to each other, especially when they had children who were friends or socialized together. We know that consistency in expectations, either within families, between families or in the community, help youth make healthy decisions and reduce drug use. Chatham Drug Free still encourages parents to talk to other parents and agree on ground rules when young people are in their home. The Safe Homes Pledge, found on the Chatham Drug Free website (www.chathamdrugfree.org), encourages parents to agree to:
1. Not knowingly allow underage youth to consume or use alcohol or illegal drugs at my house, on my property or at gatherings I am hosting at other locations.
2. Provide reasonable adult supervision when hosting gatherings of underage youth at my home or on my property. When I am out of town, I will not knowingly allow my children to host parties at my house.
3. Make every effort to lock and safely secure alcohol, medication and inhalants, keeping them out of the wrong hands.
4. Make every effort to secure weapons according to the law.
5. Talk to youth about the dangers of underage drinking, drugged driving and use of medications not intended for them.
As you can see, Safe Homes includes much more than safe storage of medication. Operation Medicine Drop became a national initiative to get unused or unneeded medications out of peoples’ homes and out of reach of both young children to reduce unintentional poising and teens and young adults to reduce diversion. What we found was that many homeowners had a cache of old medications, which they rarely inspected. Youth were aware of this and began taking medications for their own use, their friend’s use or to sell.
By disposing of unused or unneeded medications in a medication disposal drop box, those medications are not only safely stored, but also disposed of in an environmentally friendly way. We discourage people from putting medications in the trash or flushing medications down the toilet.
Medication Drop Boxes are available at the Pittsboro Police Department, Chatham County Detention Center, Siler City Police Department and Siler City Pharmacy. In addition, the Chatham County Sheriff’s Office has a mobile drop box that is available at community events and at three of the Household Hazardous Waste Collection events sponsored by Chatham County Solid Waste and Recycling. Dates are posted on the Solid Waste and Recycling and Chatham Drug Free websites.
Chatham Drug Free also works in cooperation with the Lock Your Meds campaign. Lock Your Meds encourages homeowners to take stock of their medications and lock them up for safety. They have medication lock boxes that look like little suitcases with a combination lock available. Chatham Drug Free has been encouraging homeowners and builders of new construction to install cabinet locks on at least one cabinet to be able to lock medications and other things that homeowners want to keep safely stored. A weekly pill box can then be used to only have one week of medication available if stored out of reach of young children. That way, if some of them get missing, the homeowner would know pretty much right away.
With the tobacco purchase age now moved to 21 years — which is the same as alcohol — describe for us the Safe Stores program, and how it works in Chatham.
Safe Stores was an initiative to encourage storeowners to more vigorously train their employees in checking ID’s and becoming aware of the need to check ID regardless of the appearance of the customer. In the past, store owners who had all their staff trained in either BARS (Be a Responsible Seller) by Alcohol Law Enforcement or RASP (Responsible Alcohol Server/Seller Program) by the Alcohol Beverage Control Commission were awarded Safe Stores designation.
Chatham Drug Free has floated the idea of requiring universal ID checks with limited success. A universal ID check would require clerks or wait staff to ask for ID regardless of how old the customer looks. While a bit cumbersome, it takes the guessing work away from the clerk or wait staff as to how old a person is and whether they can legally buy the product, reducing the opportunity for underage sales.
CDF is also known for the local Project Graduation and for its work in local youth leadership programs. Can you talk about those?
Chatham Drug Free has a long history of working collaboratively with Chatham County Schools and youth in the community. In years past, the Coalition has sponsored several youth leadership summits to empower youth to become a part of the prevention solution. Our goal was and continues to be to develop messaging that resonates with youth through their own words, thereby creating a tipping point and changing the culture and belief system around drugs and their dangers.
The Coalition has been involved in several school led initiatives. Project Graduation, which began through the hard work of several community leaders from Siler City in 1990, is an all-night, alcohol-, tobacco- and other drug-free celebration for graduating seniors and their guests, being held this year at Jordan-Matthews High School and open to students from the four traditional public high schools in Chatham County. Through the generosity of community businesses, houses of worship and civic organizations as well as county government and the school district, several thousand dollars are given way during the night to reward students for taking a stand against drug use and for staying up all night.
The Coalition also supports Red Ribbon Week, a week of activities in schools that promotes the awareness of the dangers of alcohol, tobacco and other drug use and Safe and Sober Prom, encouraging prom goers to pledge not to use alcohol or other drugs on prom night and encouraging parents to respond to a call no questions asked from their youth if things go awry that night.
The Coalition also works with the school district on substance use prevention curriculum and as a speakers bureau for guest speakers.
For more information, go to chathamdrugfree.org.