Friday, January 3, 2025
1/3/2025
The Connection Coalition (TCC) is a grassroots community-based substance use prevention coalition serving Central Navajo County in Arizona. The service area includes the towns of Holbrook, Snowflake-Taylor, Joseph City, Heber-Overgaard, and, on the Navajo Nation, Indian Wells and Dilkon. TCC began its collaborative work in 2022 to address the fentanyl crisis. It is comprised of a multi-sector membership with key partners across the Nation, schools, public safety, and the continuum of substance use prevention, treatment, and recovery. The Coalition Connection mission is community collaboration striving to build a resilient, healthy, substance free, connected environment for youth. TCC aims to utilize a series of community-based strategies and activities to decrease the prevalence and impact of youth marijuana, alcohol, and opioid use. Strategies to enhance community collaboration and coalition capacity include increasing member participation and improving the skills of coalition members and key partners through ongoing and evolving training on best practices in prevention science. Strategies to reduce youth substance use for the three target substances and associated public health issues involve providing information, improving skills, offering support, and enhancing access while reducing barriers. These efforts will lead to improved connections. Our project focuses on promoting youth coping and resiliency, addressing perceived risks, improving the frequency and quality of caregiver-child communication, increasing youth engagement in prosocial activities, and limiting access to the target substances. Short-term outcomes include increasing membership and collaboration with key stakeholders across the service area, enhancing knowledge and skills of best-practices in prevention science, trauma-informed approaches and evidence-based prevention programs among coalition staff and members, key partners, caregivers, and youth. Additionally, increasing community awareness of the risk and protective factors related to youth substance use, providing wellness opportunities for youth and parents/caregivers to engage and creating community prosocial opportunities to address the root causes of youth substance use. Intermediate outcomes include a decrease in youth accessing the three target substances from home, dispensaries, family, and social settings. Also increasing youth perception of the risks associated with marijuana/cannabis, alcohol, and fentanyl and heroin improving the frequency and quality of parent-child conversations, boosting youth participation in peer education and prosocial activities, and enhancing their perceived value of this involvement. Finally, improving youth coping skills and resiliency. Anticipated long-term outcomes will include increased coalition growth and engagement, improved youth perception of the risk and harm of substances, reductions in past 30-day youth use of marijuana, alcohol, and heroin/fentanyl, addressing substance use disparities among our youth related to mental health and resiliency factors, and reducing overdose rates among youth and young adults in central Navajo County, AZ.
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).