Stakeholders

Stakeholders are individuals that share a stake in an issue at hand that are affected by a particular problem or are affected by what the solution would bring as far as new changes. My problem definition is 'Increasing Hormonal complications Associated with Anabolic Steroid use in the United States among adolescents from 2000 to 2013.' Since my problem definition states the main target - adolescents - the stakeholders would be those most associated with adolescents, meaning the adolescents themselves, their parents, the adolescents' sports coaches and sports teams associated with the individual (if any), and sports divisions that are associated with athletes in this age range.

In order to address the problem of anabolic steroids, there will be stakeholders that would have to be negotiated with as implementations against anabolic steroid use would be set in place. Since steroids are generally not viewed as a positive advantage my sports leauges or by people in general, the focus of the stakeholders that would retaliate against public health implementations are the adolescents themselves that are using these steroids. The motivation for using anabolic steroids range from generally becoming stronger, either for a particular sport or for reasons of appearance, financial gain, and to have a competitive edge in the world of sports. If the anabolic steroids were taken away, the adolescents would, in a sense, have to work on a 'leveled playing field,' and not perform or not look at the high extremes that they would have if on the anabolic steroids.

Some interventions that I would put in place is to possibly provide incentives for those adolescent athletes that perform well in sports without taking steroids. This could be carried out by creating scholarships or grants that would require a drug test before receiving the award, as well as actively seeking out exceptional adolescent athletes and recognizing them for their work. More severe effects would be to enforce punishments for adolescents that use anabolic steroids, such as having to pay a fine or being forced to attend a program for a designated number of hours that would outline the dangers and negatives of using steroids. Another good intervention would be to provide education on steroids to younger populations. In fact, this is an implementation that has been used by the federal government. The program states that the Secretary of Health and Human Services shall award grants to public and nonprofit private entities to enable such entities to carry out science-based education programs in elementary and secondary schools to highlight the harmful effects of anabolic steroids (108th Congress, 2004). In this way, the intervention would be more of a preventative action rather than punishing students already taking the steroids. 

In addressing the adolescents concerns of not having their peak performance as part of my designated solution, the scholarships for clean athletes would take care of the financial incentive as well as add a new light to reason why to train without steroids. Also, by teaching the negative effects of steroids to adolescents, both in appearances and in negative health effects with continual use over time, individuals would hopefully identify that the gains of anabolic steroids are not worth the detrimental effects of hormonal imbalances and therefore unusual changes to the body in the short term and such diseases such as cancer in the long term. 

References 

S. 2195--108th Congress: Anabolic Steroid Control Act of 2004. (2004). In www.GovTrack.us. Retrieved April 6, 2013, from http://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/108/s2195