Project Overview

The Changing the Culture of Substance Use (CCSU) project launched in 2012 as a special focus within the CoP, with funding provided by the BC Ministry of Health. The goal was to build local capacity among stakeholders at BC’s post-secondary institutions, and collectively develop new sustained mechanisms of change to promote healthier relationships with substances.

Over the course of five years, this focused learning community constructed a learning agenda that helped drive collaborative thinking and interactive and engaging activities related to campus substance use. Participating campus members worked within the local realities of their respective campuses to address current challenges and opportunities, while considering the collective impact of individual behaviours, social cultures, and environmental cultures in the project’s tools and resources.

Although dedicated funding for CCSU ended in 2016, it continues as an active sub-CoP within HM|HC.

View the Tools and Resources section to download the CCSU Snapshot Report, the Logic of Change Model or an example of Capacity Building and Knowledge Exchange and Sharing in the project to learn more.

Background

Changing the Culture of Substance Use was a project under Healthy Minds | Healthy Campuses that was made to develop capacity in BC’s campuses and a provincial support infrastructure towards changing the culture of substance use.  The lead partners of the project were the Canadian Mental Health Association BC Division (CMHA BC) and the former Centre for Addictions Research of BC (CARBC), now the Canadian Institute for Substance Use Research (CISUR).  

The project was based on a socio-ecological model that encouraged a multi-component approach with attention to individual behaviours, social cultures and environmental conditions.  In Phase I and Phase II of the project, 11 post-secondary institutions were actively involved.  Through consultations, knowledge exchange between campuses, and co-creation of evidence-based resources, the project was designed to facilitate action by campus change agents and a provincial infrastructure of support.  Additional funds were provided by the Ministry of Health to pursue the third and final phase.  Collectively, changes on campuses across the province will contribute to the goals of the Ten Year Plan to Address Mental Health and Substance Use in British Columbia.  

This collaborative initiative was guided by several working assumptions, including:

  • Bio-psycho-socio-cultural understandings of substance use that recognize a complex range of relational contributors to use and outcomes
  • A socio-ecological model of health promotion that develops capacity at both individual and collective levels to enhance settings as well as support people within those environments
  • Participatory processes that encourage interdisciplinary engagement to contribute to deliberation on challenges and to determination and implementation of appropriate solutions
  • Social-learning theories whereupon members of the community of practice engage with one another to enhance knowledge exchange
  • Recognition that different settings require different solutions involving appropriate selection and adaptations of sound, evidence-informed practices to address local factors influencing wellness
  • Consolidation of mechanisms that ensure sustained development and impact beyond the life of the project, encouraging integrative rather than additive actions

Alcohol and other substance use present an important challenge for many BC post-secondary institutions in their aim to promote health and well-being among members of the campus community.  Evidence shows that changing the culture of substance use is a complex but worthwhile undertaking that supports–and often involves–efforts around a broad array of goals such as policy development, individual intervention and community health promotion. 

Campuses involved in this project benefited from an enhanced ability to deal not only with substance use concerns, but also an expansive range of issues that are often associated with substance use and students’ mental and physical health in general.

Get Involved

Eleven campuses across B.C. actively participated in the project, which can be viewed on the map below.  Learn more about how the project involves campuses in images from the CCSU Infographic.

ccsu campuses map

Why Campuses Participated

Involvement in a Focused Learning Community

Participating campus community members experienced a range of interactive and engaging activities designed to support learning around the identified focus for this project – substance use. Nested within the broader Healthy Minds | Healthy Campuses Community of Practice, this focused learning community constructed a learning agenda that helped drive collaborative thinking and work related to campus substance use. The activities of this group aligned with the local realities of each participating campus, helping to ensure that the identified challenges and opportunities for change map closely on to the contexts of the campuses involved. Campus community members participated in face-to-face and virtual activities, learning from one other, while moving forward together in designing strategies and implementing the best thinking related to substance use.

Access to Consultation and Facilitation

This project was resourced by a team of six from CMHA and CARBC (now CISUR). Each team member brought knowledge and experience in the areas of substance use, mental health, health promotion, and learning. This team played an integral role in moving the project forward, providing content and resources, while helping to facilitate capacity development amongst participating campuses. There were also opportunities for tailored consultation and facilitation processes at the individual campus level, as well as opportunities for campuses to experience consultation and facilitated processes among one another.

Co-Development of Approaches and Resources

A key area of this project was the development of approaches and resources that campuses could draw from in the area of substance use. Based on specific activity areas, the project team helped co-develop approaches and resources with campuses, making them available for the learning community to pilot and use. These products were shared in a curated and online resource area that was also made available to the broader Healthy Minds | Healthy Campuses Community of Practice. Participating campuses continue to co-develop resources that are responsive to the unique campus contexts involved in their development, while simultaneously being useful to other campus communities throughout British Columbia. For example, a campus might co-develop healthy policy in the area of availability and pricing of alcohol on campus. A product that might emerge from this process could include the policy itself, as well as a description of how to engage relevant stakeholders in a process that researches and produces effective policy in this area.

 

Tools and Resources

Smoking in the Post-Secondary Context: A report for the Cultures of Smoking project

This report provides an overview of a 2018-2019 endeavor in which 5 BC campuses participated, seeking to explore, understand and relate appropriately to the social practices and meaning of smoking among their members. The report summarizes the backdrop and dialogic approach for the initiative as well as issues faced, findings that emerged and anticipated direction for respective local efforts.

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

Cannabis Legalization: An Opportunity for Healthier Relationships with Cannabis on Campus

This resource is meant to help campuses pursue and implement a health promotion approach to cannabis. Besides respect for new laws, this guide encourages efforts to understand cannabis use in the campus context, build shared and personal literacy around cannabis among campus members, foster connectedness and engagement to facilitate collaborative action, and apply judicious regulation that recognizes diversity, upholds individual autonomy and elicits social responsibility. Campuses can thereby fulfil their educational mandate and lead the public as called for by the Okanagan Charter.

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

Regulating Use and Marketing of Substances: Substance Use Policy on Campus

This is the fourth in a series of discussion papers reflecting on a health promotion framework for policy initiatives that bear on substance use. This paper takes up how measures in the campus context to carefully limit situations of use and restrict promotional inducements can serve shared and personal well-being. Appropriate policy efforts will also support safer conditions for use and constructive engagement with those who do use. Readers are invited to relate with fellow campus members on how this can best be carried out in their setting.

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

Focusing on fentanyl: If you party, plan ahead

This resource was designed to help campus members understand the risks that students may encounter at parties, on-campus or off, in order to help students mitigate their risk in a realistic way.

We encourage you to use this open, honest conversation as a guideline or foundational tool, adding resources and services specific to your individual campus and student needs, and building on or tailoring the following tips, as needed:

  • It’s safest to only party with friends or people you trust.
  • Stick to one substance and pace yourself.

… and more >>>

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

Promoting Health Literacy: Substance Use Policy on Campus

This is the third in a series of discussion papers reflecting on a health promotion framework for policy initiatives that bear on substance use. This paper explores developing capacity to manage health by attending to culture, engaging in holistic drug education and intervening to encourage more beneficial practices around use. Readers are invited to relate with fellow campus members on how local campus policy action could promote literacy in regard to substances.

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

Building Community: Substance Use Policy on Campus

This is the second in a series of discussion papers reflecting on a health promotion framework for policy initiatives that bear on substance use. Various policies that make no explicit reference to substance use can have a significant impact. This paper takes up the critical area of enhancing connectedness on campus. Readers are invited to ponder how they and fellow campus members can together strengthen ties and promote shared wellness.

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

A Framework for Thought and Action: Substance Use Policy on Campus

This is the first in a series of discussion papers that offer and apply a potential framework for guiding thought and action on substance use policy. Readers are encouraged to carefully consider and discuss the broad theoretical perspective of the frame, and then reflect with colleagues on how that frame might be applied to policies within their own campus community context.

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

Community Cooking Workshops

This promising practice is an initiative offered by Simon Fraser University (SFU) to international undergraduate and graduate students. It relates SFU’s experience in providing community cooking workshops and offers suggestions on why and how other post-secondary institutions might host similar workshops in their settings and expect comparable outcomes from such efforts.

 

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

Most Significant Change Stories for Dinner Basket Conversation Facilitators

Dinner Basket Conversations have been hosted on Selkirk College campuses for the past six years in an effort to gather information from students about substance use patterns and mental health challenges. These conversations have been observed to have a therapeutic effect on both the participants and the facilitators, and demonstrate the potential to shift values, cultural understandings and viewpoints. The Changing the Culture of Substance Use (CCSU) Community of Practice was interested in knowing whether the Dinner Basket Conversations were instrumental in changing culture.

As such, the Most Significant Change Story evaluative technique was adapted to a research instrument so the results could be published. After a number of stories were collected, they were reviewed by two committees: one comprised of students and another comprised of administrative staff at Selkirk College. See which story was Most Significant and why…

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

Most Significant Change Stories at Selkirk College

This guide includes seven examples of first-person accounts of culture shifts at Selkirk College, as part of the Dinner Basket Conversations initiative. Participants were invited to tell their stories of change until the “Most Significant Change Story” emerged to signify the value or efficacy of the initiative. The process is meant to be ongoing as new stories emerge.

Learn more about the Most Significant Change Stories here.

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

Promising Practice: Do2GetThru

Do2GetThru is a project at Camosun College in Victoria, BC, that explores the culture of substance use on campus. Since Camosun College is a commuter campus, the landscape around substance use is different from that of many other post-secondary institutions with on-campus student residences. To understand this difference, the Camosun College community asked student educators to use drama and theatre techniques to raise awareness about mental health and identify key issues that might help facilitate a shift in substance use culture.

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

Balancing our Thinking around Drinking: Low-Risk Alcohol Use on Campus

This is one in a series of resources meant to guide the development of specific tools to promote elements of a comprehensive approach to psychoactive substance use within a post-secondary institution’s community. This guide emphasizes points to consider when promoting low-risk drinking guidelines, suggests messaging related to low-risk drinking guidelines and provides tools and samples to support implementation.

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

A Guide to Promoting Healthier Residence Environments

This guide is one in a series of resources intended to serve a comprehensive approach to promoting healthier relationships with alcohol and other substances in post-secondary settings. Grounded in evidence and theory, it features ideas and suggestions for supporting the creation of a healthier residence community.

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

Promising Practice: TRU's Drink with Class Initiative

At Thompson Rivers University (TRU), Drink with Class has become a central philosophy in residence. This promising practice highlights culture change at TRU and describes the multi-layered components the initiative uses to promote healthier relationships with alcohol in campus residence.

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

Dinner and Dialogue: Engaging Community in Conversations about Drinking Culture

This is a guide on how one might host a dinner and dialogue on the culture of alcohol with members of the community. This guide outlines the reasons one might host a dinner and dialogue, as well as a potential planning and facilitation approach to a dinner and dialogue.

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

Promising Practice: Selkirk’s Hosting a Dinner Basket Conversation on Substance Use

Selkirk College has been hosting innovative dinner basket conversations related to substance use. Check out this promising practice to access their recipe for a dinner basket conversation, guiding questions for facilitators, a reflection sheet for participants, cooking recipes to get you started, and more!

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

Dinner Basket Conversations video

See how Dinner Basket Conversations are hosted at Selkirk College, and get the ingredients to foster a healthy student culture on your campus.

 

 

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

CCSU Snapshot Report

The CCSU Snapshot Report: Phase II Project Update was created to help community members convey to campus stakeholders a sense of the CCSU work and what campuses involved in the project hope to accomplish.  It is our hope that this report will create opportunities for fruitful dialogue and increased awareness of the importance of this type of work to the health and wellness of campus members. 

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

CCSU Logic of Change Model

View a conceptual model of the logic of change in the Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project (CCSU).  The model outlines project processes, activities by change agents, intermediate outcomes and systems outcomes and goals.  See the link between the CCSU Project and the BC Healthy Minds, Healthy People 10-Year-Plan.

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

Capacity Building and Knowledge Exchange Flowchart

View an example of Capacity Building and Knowledge Exchange in the Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project.  In the flowchart, you can see cross-campus sharing among the 11 campuses involved in the project, with an example of some of the stakeholders from a Residence Services group who are reached through the project.

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

CCSU Infographic

Based on survey responses that participating campuses in the CCSU Project completed, we developed an infographic to distribute the findings and share a bit more about the project.  Learn more about the stakeholders who have been reached through the project, what the main action areas have been so far and key messages shared by members from Phase I and Phase II campuses. 

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Changing the Culture of Substance Use Project

Videos

Do2GetThru

Under our Influence: Shifting a Culture

Summit 2014: Exploring the Culture of Substance Use on Rural Campuses through Community Building

Dinner Basket Conversations at Selkirk College

Summit 2014 Action Area: Community Connectedness, Belonging and Inclusion

Presentations

Overview of the CCSU Project

Part One: Changing the Culture of Substance Use on Campus

Part Two: Changing the Culture of Substance Use on Campus

Balancing Our Thinking Around Drinking: Low-Risk Alcohol Use on Campus

Putting the Pieces Together: Low-Risk Cannabis Use on Campus

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Pre-Summit Session: Changing the Culture of Substance Use Phase 1 and Phase 2 Campuses

Testimonials

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