Friday, May 3, 2024
5/3/2024
“The Collaborative: A Three Community Region Working to Prevent Youth Use of Marijuana and Prescription Drugs” seeks to establish and strengthen community collaboration in support of local prevention efforts in East Bridgewater, Rockland and Whitman, Massachusetts. The Collaborative will institute targeted prevention efforts of youth impacted by adverse childhood experiences who are enrolled in mainstream and vocational technical schools. The Collaborative’s community is located in southeastern, Massachusetts and serves approximately 46,976 individuals across the three suburban towns. On average, each of these communities are made up of predominately white residents (92.9%) in addition to 2.7% of the population being African American, 1.1% Asian and 1.9% Hispanic. The median household income of the overall community is $81,282 with approximately 6.6% of persons living in poverty. To increase community collaboration, the Collaborative plans to (1) increase cultural competency by increasing coalition members of under-represented community populations and (2) increase sustainability by enhancing the coalitions’ and communities’ capacity. Strategies to accomplish these objectives include: engaging and recruiting diverse community stakeholders, enhancing the skills of Collaborative members, collecting and assessing youth substance use data, as well as providing information to the Collaborative communities and overall region on current youth substance use trends and best-practices. To reduce youth substance abuse, the Collaborative seeks to (1) increase youth and parental perception of harm towards marijuana by 3% amongst Collaborative youth and parents of grades 8, 9, 11 & 12, (2) reduce past-30-day prescription drug misuse by 0.5 percentage points amongst Collaborative youth grades 8, 9, 11 & 12 and (3) create a formal prevention policy between the two local vocational schools, recovery high school, youth serving organizations, and Collaborative police departments on identifying and intervening with students K-12 most at-risk for prescription drug use. Strategies to accomplish these objectives include: assessing community belief towards marijuana, providing information, enhancing skills, reducing access, modifying policies, and providing support. The project will serve 237,687 individuals annually and 1,188,435 individuals throughout the lifetime of the project.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).
