Nonprofit aims to get students involved in solving opioid crisis

JACKSON, Tenn.– The nonprofit “Healthy Tennessee” launched a new challenge for high school students in Jackson-Madison County on Friday.

“Each school or student group in a school, there can be multiple proposals to come up with a video, and they’re gonna send the video to us, Healthy Tennessee,” said Dr. Manny Sethi, president and founder of Healthy Tennessee.

The goal is for students to find new ways to educate other teens on the dangers of opioids.

“We will award them a financial award to basically get the program going. Now, in that video, they have to be able to explain how they would educate their fellow students,” Dr. Sethi said.

One winning team will be selected from each of the three divisions of the state.

Those teams will go on to present their videos at a state summit to Governor Bill Lee’ staff.

“The one person we haven’t talked to is our youth, and so it’s time to engage our youth across the state in the first of its kind effort to battle this problem,” Dr. Sethi said.

“What we’re hoping is through this, they will brainstorm and see what they think would be the best way to capture the audience of our young people to make them understand the dangers of opioids,” Annette Wilson, Jackson-Madison County School System Coordinated School Health Administrator, said.

This challenge wants to help students get involved in solving opioid abuse across the state.

“It means I can make my community better, you know, things like that, actually help out,” said Adem Alsalman, a Jackson Central-Merry Early College High senior.