The Coalition For Health Promotion will implement environmental prevention strategies in Youngstown, OH as a means or preventing and reducing youth substance use, in zip codes 44502, 44507, and 44511. - The Coalition For Health Promotion (CFHP) project will implement environmental prevention strategies in order to (1) reduce youth substance use, and over time, reduce substance use among adults, and (2) establish and strengthen collaboration among community stakeholders and community organizations to address youth substance use. The target community is Youngstown, Ohio, which is located in the northeastern part of the State in Mahoning County. Youngstown is the largest urban area in Mahoning County. The project will target the area comprised of zip codes 44502, 44507, and 44511, which are located on the South Side of town. Multiple risk factors, along with a lack of sufficient community protective factors exist within the community which increase the probability of youth substance use, such as the high overdose rate in these zip code areas, level of academic failure in schools, high poverty rate and number of students that are economically disadvantaged, and a local prevention infrastructure that is lacking in sufficient resources to provide the level of service to impact the area at a higher level. Additionally, health disparities exist among racial groups that reside in this area.
Specific objectives are to (1) reduce youth substance use in 6th, 9th, and 11th graders in the target community, and (2) increase community collaboration among individuals, stakeholders, community organizations to reduce youth substance use. The Strategic Prevention Framework and the Seven Strategies for Community-Level Change are the methodological processes that will be utilized and are embedded in all program strategies and evaluation processes. The CFHP will specifically focus on utilizing strategies contained in the 12 Month Action Plan to reduce alcohol and marijuana use among youth, and will also focus on prescription drug misuse. Specific interventions utilized seek to change community norms, enhance and improve the skills of those providing prevention services, as well as those of prescribers to reduce prescription drug misuse, provide evidence based services to youth in schools and afterschool, provide alternative activities to facilitate an increase in protective factors, increase information in the community on strategies to reduce youth substance use, reduce access to substance use, increase access to services to prevent and reduce use, reduce local barriers to services, changing the consequences of using, and engaging in policy change at the formal and informal level to facilitate policy to prevent and reduce youth substance use. The CFHP will also enhance the capability of the existing substance use prevention system to provide innovative service, and facilitate collaboration among stakeholders, community agencies, coalitions, etc., so that collectively local capacity can be increased to provide interventions to reduce youth substance use by using the collective professional expertise of Coalition members and stakeholders. The impact of this should be a healthier, safer community where youth thrive and do not succumb to substance abuse and other behavioral health disorders.
