The Aurora Substance Abuse Prevention (ASAP) coalition serves the city of Aurora, Colorado, and the students of the Arapahoe- Adams School District 28J, more commonly called Aurora Public Schools (APS). The fifth largest school district in Colorado, APS serves nearly 40,000 students at 63 schools with over 5,000 staff members. Fifty-five percent (55%) of the student body is of Hispanic descent and 70% receive free or reduced-price lunch. The City of Aurora has a 2019 estimated population of 379,289 with a quarter of the population (25.7%) being young people under the age of 18. The first majority-minority city in Colorado, Aurora is comprised of individuals from 130 countries and residents who speak 160 languages, making it a diverse and culturally-rich community. Less than half of the city’s population (45%) is Non-Hispanic White, 28.4% identify as Hispanic/Latinx, 15% Black or African American, and 6.3% Asian.
ASAP begin under the backbone leadership of Aurora Mental Health Center (AMHC), the community mental health center serving the city of Aurora, Colorado. In 2019, AMHC reexamined its mission and determined coalition partnership, rather than leadership, was a better a fit for the agency. Tri-County Health Department (TCHD) – the local public health agency serving the Colorado counties of Adams, Arapahoe, and Douglas – was asked to take over backbone leadership as an experienced coalition convener with demonstrated success in prevention programming as well as policy adoption and implementation.
High youth substance use rates and identified disparities make Aurora a community of critically high need. As an established local coalition, ASAP is well poised and committed to directly impacting risk and protective factors in diverse Aurora communities with the intended outcome of reducing underage use of alcohol, marijuana, tobacco/vaping products. The ASAP Coalition will be the catalyst for change in the health and wellbeing of the young people of Aurora, Colorado. The coalition will bring together multisector community stakeholders to identify, plan, and develop community-level interventions to reduce risk factors that increase the risk of substance abuse and improve or develop protective factors that minimize that risk. This project will use the Strategic Prevention Framework to identify and select comprehensive, data-driven substance abuse prevention strategies to achieve goals and objectives
Overarching Goal: Decrease use of substances including alcohol, marijuana, tobacco/vaping among young people by implementing evidence-based prevention strategies in school, healthcare, criminal justice, and other community settings.
• Measureable objective 1: By December 31, 2025, reduce the proportion of high school students in Aurora who report drinking alcohol within the last 30 days by 15%. (Source: Healthy Kids Colorado Survey)
• Measurable objective 2: By December 31, 2025, reduce the proportion of high school students in Aurora who report ever using marijuana by 15%. (Source: Healthy Kids Colorado Survey)
• Measureable objective 3: By December 31, 2025, reduce the proportion of high school students who report ever using any tobacco product, including electronic vaping products, by 15%. (Source: Healthy Kids Colorado Survey)