A recently released survey reporting on the health of Somerville high school students showed that substance abuse among the city's youth dropped slightly over the past several years, pitting the city's level of underage drug use at lower levels than the state average.
The Somerville Student Health Survey, released Wednesday and based on the responses from over 1,000 Somerville students in grades 9 to 12, showed a decrease over the past 10 years in substance abuse, including usage of alcohol, cigarettes and marijuana.
Alcohol use among Somerville high school students has also fallen slightly since 2008, dropping from 37 to 33 percent. Use of other drugs also slightly decreased or plateaued.
Residents of Somerville and surrounding communities met on Wednesday to discuss the results of the survey at a public forum held at the Somerville High School Auditorium.
The city-sponsored group Somerville Cares About Prevention (SCAP) organized the survey in conjunction with the Somerville Health Department and Somerville Public Schools.
When compared with the rest of Massachusetts, Somerville generally rated better or about the same. For substance abuse, Somerville high school students reported considerably fewer instances of abuse.
Other issues addressed by the survey included violence and safety, mental health, sexual health, weight perception and physical activity.
Even as the city beats the state average in substance abuse, Somerville students are having sexual intercourse at a younger age than are their peers across the Commonwealth. Meanwhile, the use of condoms by Somerville students is higher than the use by students in Massachusetts overall, according to the survey.
The rates of violence among Somerville high school students in school and at home, including physical fights and incidents with weapons, slightly dropped from last year. Even so, the number of students who reported verbal or emotional abuse in the family and witnessed violence in the family showed a roughly 5 percent hike since 2002, when SCAP first started conducting the annual survey.
The overall mental health of students has improved over last year, and levels of self-harm, depression and suicidal tendencies have decreased since 2002.
Fewer students perceived themselves as overweight, and a greater number of students are engaging in vigorous or moderate physical activity, relative to 2002 levels. Student community involvement and the use of social supports have also increased since 2002.
The survey is administered during class time and is completely anonymous. Administrators go through the results by hand to look for untruthful answers in order to make the results as conclusive as possible, according to SCAP Director Cory Mashburn.
High school students are polled every even year and middle school students are polled every odd year, Mashburn told the Daily.
Organizations throughout Somerville, including Somerville Public Schools and Shape Up Somerville, a citywide initiative that encourages physical activity and balanced eating, use the results of the survey to write grants and learn more about issues it needs to address within the community, according to Mashburn.
"So many people work on youth health in Somerville," he said.
The youth survey speaks to a number of prevention programs SCAP organizes. Somerville Positive Forces, a subgroup of SCAP, consists of 10 high school students from Somerville campaigning against substance abuse in the community, according to Lovelee Heller, a community organizer for SCAP.
"We focus on changing the environment that the individual is living in," Heller told the Daily. "Research shows that the individual education is much less effective than the environmental factors."
Ian Wong, director of health education at Tufts, believes that students need to be cautioned against substance abuse before they arrive at college. Stemming drug usage at the high school age, he said, could prove successful in achieving this.
"People have a tendency to abuse [substances] during big transitions," Wong said. "We have an opportunity here at Tufts to work with Somerville on transition programs."
