Healthy Chelsea Coalition Drug Free Communities Grant - The City of Chelsea, Massachusetts is poised to redouble its efforts of the past five years to strengthen community collaborations to prevent youth substance use. The Healthy Chelsea Coalition, under the auspices of Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH), has built a robust coalition, representing the twelve sectors and beyond, that is engaging youth and collaborating to implement evidence-based strategies to reduce risk factors and increase protective factors. The target population for this application is middle and high school students in Chelsea, which suffers significant health disparities. Chelsea is a low-income community, home to many immigrants and refugees. The average per capita income in Chelsea is $26,203, compared to $45,555 statewide (ACS, 2016-20). Almost 68% of the population is Latino, and 47% is foreign-born, and is the second most densely populated city in Massachusetts. The Chelsea Public School population is even more likely to be Latinx than the general population. Eighty-eight percent of Chelsea students are Hispanic, 42% are English language learners, and 81% are low-income. Given its risk factors of poverty, housing density and a high rate of essential workers (80%), as well as the fact that is a Latinx community, it had one of the highest rates of COVID infection in the country. Among the impacts of the high rates of COVID infection, compounding the ill effects of long-standing disparities, was and continues to be ever increasing stress and mental health concerns for teens and young people. Results of focus groups reveal that the use of marijuana is widespread as a coping mechanism for dealing with mental health issues, as is nicotine, both via vaping. The coalition will focus on these two substances in the short and medium term, with the goal of preventing use of prescription drugs, particularly opioids, in the longer term because opioid overdose death rates among Latinx people in Massachusetts have surpassed whites for the first time ever. The coalition plans to further strengthen collaboration across the key sectors of the community by increasing coalition participation and membership and ensuring diverse representation. The coalition develops its action plan using the Strategic Prevention Framework. In addition, the Coalition will work to prevent substance use among youth by using the seven strategies for community level change with a focus on mental health stressors that lead youth to use substances as a coping mechanism. The coalition will do this by providing youth substance use education through a variety of methods; enhancing skills so that youth and adults build positive connections an improve decision-making skills; providing support to reduce risk factors and enhance protective factors through alternative activities, mentoring, referrals, support groups and more; enhancing access, reducing barriers and improving connections between systems and services, particularly by reducing stigma and sharing information; changing consequences through a comprehensive review of school policies and compliance checks; and changing the physical design through teen engagement with the Parks department on creating more welcoming spaces for youth. All of the activities have SMART objectives measured through a comprehensive evaluation plan.
