Approved Minutes of March 27, 2024

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MINUTES ORANGE COUNTY BOARD OF HEALTH March 27, 2024 and Ms. Luu and some representatives from the university go to these homes and provide motivational interviewing and education to the party hosts to reduce the likelihood of another incident. She added that they also provide education to property managers and owners about code enforcement, party registration, noise mitigation, and safe host training. • Ms. Luu briefly touched on social districts (i.e., designated open container drinking zones) and explained that there currently are no official considerations for social districts in Chapel Hill, Southern Village, or Carrboro, though there have been some murmurs on the topic in downtown Hillsborough. Ms. Luu said that Durham, Raleigh, and Cary currently have social districts, and that social districts present a problem for public health because they can normalize social drinking, increase accessibility of alcohol, and raise the likelihood of underage drinking due to increased accessibility and increased barriers to enforcement. She added that social districts may also present equity issues, as historically marginalized communities are more likely to live near areas that become zoned as social districts. • The Good Samaritan Law failed to be updated last year in the legislature, though the CCC is hoping to see it come back in the future, as Good Samaritan Laws help protect individuals who may be wary of law enforcement and thus less likely to seek help for either alcohol or drug overdose. • Dr. Jonnal asked if Ms. Luu ever feels existentially crushed by the difficulties of working at the local level against the lobbying of big alcohol companies, to which Ms. Luu replied that yes, she sometimes does, in part because the funding for public health comes nowhere near what the lobbyists have access to. However, she added that she works with a lot of passionate people who are great at what they do, which is re-energizing, and that she and her team lean hard into the existing data and evidence to support their work. Ms. Luu shared that she hopes to complete a Capstone project with MPH students next year focused on qualitative data around alcohol use to expand the breadth of the data available to support alcohol control. • In response to Mr. Whitaker's question about the CCC's relationship with local businesses, Ms. Luu explained that the CCC is housed under the fiscal sponsorship of the Downtown Chapel Hill Partnership, which gives them an interesting relationship with local businesses. She added that, whenever possible, she prefers to find "carrots" to motivate change (rather than "sticks") and seeks to collaborate with and educate business owners, emphasizing that responsible alcohol service makes better economic sense than irresponsible service. She went on to say that the CCC incentivizes responsible beverage service training for servers and bartenders, both in English and Spanish, and subsidizes ID scanners for local businesses to help remove barriers to responsible alcohol service. • Dr. Stuebe asked if Ms. Luu could comment on trends in binge drinking and sexual assault on campus related to the pandemic; Ms. Luu explained that during the pandemic, binge-drinking trended down when students were sent home and right back up when they returned to campus and that overall drinking levels increased among women in their 30s during the pandemic. Otherwise, local data is unfortunately limited on this topic, so she is unable to comment meaningfully at this time, though her hunch is that both have returned to pre-pandemic levels based on national data. • Mr. Bagby noted that many ABC stores hired teachers and bartenders early in the pandemic due to the increased demand for alcohol and decrease in ability to perform in- person jobs. He said that many of these bartenders are continuing to work at ABC stores even now. Ms. Luu agreed and said that many people were drinking to cope, especially young people, which is worrying. However, she observed that from a retail perspective S:\Managers Working Files\BOH\Agendas &Abstracts\2024 Agenda and Abstracts/ March Page 5