Project Title: Southern Arizona Coalitions Partnerships for Success Project
Duration: September 30, 2024 - September 29, 2029
Applicant Name: Construyendo Circulos de Paz/Constructing Circles of Peace Project
Point of Contact: Blanca Acosta, Executive Director
Constructing Circles of Peace is proposing the Southern Arizona Coalitions Partnerships for Success to reduce onset and progression of youth substance use and prevalence of negative youth mental health outcomes through use of evidence-based programs and prevention education and outreach methods. Using the Strategic Prevention Framework, the project will include iterative assessment, capacity building, planning, implementation and evaluation of prevention strategies in a collaborative effort across the three rural U.S.-Mexico border communities of Cochise, Santa Cruz and Yuma Counties located in Southern Arizona.
All three counties in this project are HRSA-designated areas in rural, underserved areas of Arizona that are disparately impacted by SUD. The service area is 62% Latino and 50.8% of our population is living in poverty. Goals for this project include decreasing youth substance use by addressing knowledge, attitudes and behaviors that lead to you use; increasing mental health awareness, knowledge and healthy coping and resiliency skills among youth; and decreasing health inequalities for past 30 youth substance use and prevalence of depression, anxiety and suicide among Latino youth living in our border communities. Project objectives include obtaining increases in perceived risks of youth substance use and decreases in youth access to substance and attitudes and norms that favor substance use. Additional objectives include increasing mental health awareness, knowledge and youth resiliency skills.
Performance targets over the five year project include reaching 8,000 youth ages 12-17 years and 12,000 caregivers with universal, selected or indicated prevention efforts, including 114,000 community members with prevention messaging and 3,750 youth with individual and small group prevention services. Collaboration will occur between the Santa Cruz County Substance Abuse Coalition, Campesinos sin Fronteras Coalition and the Mayauel II (Amistades) Coalition.
