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Show Health educator offers 5 an ounce of prevention " I i V , i ( " , ? : . . in ; U i j i : .- Kim Lingren plans to deliver an ounce of preventionwith preven-tionwith the help of $33,000 in grant money. Kim is the new Prevention Education Specialist at the Summit County Health Department. De-partment. Her job is to teach ways to prevent health problems. She's a BYU graduate, but if you think Summit County will be too rowdy for her, she has also worked in mental health for a year in Chicago. "That's crazier than Disneyland," Kim said. The state dispersed $2 million this year for prevention preven-tion education. Each county in the state wrote up a plan to use its share, said Lindgren. Summit's share was $33,000. (This includes Kim's travel expenses.) Utah's priority target, Kim said, is drug and alcohol abuse. Its goals are (1) reduction of drug-alcohol problems for children, kindergarten kin-dergarten to 12th grade; (2) reduction of DUIs; (3) reduction of drug use, 18-26; (4) stopping misuse of prescriptions pre-scriptions by elderly women; and (5) education to , help increase awareness, in communities and families, of help that is available. She plans to spend one day a week in each school district in Summit County. She is available for classroom class-room presentations on drug abuse. If the school has a problem child, she can assess what social service might help the youngster. Then she can link up the child with the right agency. Kim also will develop a curriculum for schooling youthful alcohol offenders who are referred there by a judge. Education also means a lot of publicity. Kim will work on media campaigns to I ' ' fl'IJ : Kim Lingren ... . - ft - Ll. ! increase public awareness 01 services. In each community, commun-ity, workshops and parent education programs can be administered. An Arizona native, Kim graduated from BYU in 1982, She also worked in a Provo program that counseled child abusers. "I found that people react to child abusers the way the abusers themselves them-selves react to children," she said. H wasn i a pruuicui lur me to work with them," Kim said. But she was taken aback ' by Chicago. "I can't believe 1 it's real life." She likes the ' diversity and the smaller population of the West. She wants Summit County's Coun-ty's diverse population to come to her and say what they want. "We're not here : to ramrod anything down on people. We're very flexible." : |