North-East Delaware's Community Coalition Project: Youth Leadership, Prevention Training, and Environmental Changes - Planet Youth Coalition (PYC), hosted by Bellevue Community Center, proposes to continue implementation of a comprehensive, community-level prevention initiative serving northeastern New Castle County, Delaware. The project targets youth in ZIP codes 19809, 19810, 19803, and 19802, aligned with the Brandywine School District. These communities include a diverse suburban population with interconnected risk and protective environments due to Delaware’s statewide school choice system. Recent state and local data indicate persistent risk factors associated with youth alcohol, marijuana, and prescription drug misuse, including weakened protective factors following the restrictions imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic, fragmented service coordination, and inconsistent communication of prevention messaging. The purpose of this Drug-Free Communities (DFC) project is to reduce youth 30-day use/misuse of alcohol, marijuana, and prescription drugs, and improve perception of risk of those substances, by strengthening community collaboration, improving organizational capacity, increasing access to evidence-based prevention education, enhancing referral networks, and aligning systems and policy environments that influence youth behavior. PYC will implement a coordinated set of strategies consistent with the DFC logic model and the Seven Strategies for Community Change. Key activities include expanding a unified coalition brand and digital communications platform to reinforce prevention norms; delivering and evaluating evidence-based curricula such as Lions Quest; certifying and deploying Mental Health First Aid instructors; developing standardized referral protocols across at least six partner organizations; launching a structured Youth Coalition Cohort to build youth leadership and civic engagement; mapping youth assets, environmental risks, and transportation barriers; strengthening internal prevention policies within youth-serving organizations; and facilitating presentations of youth-informed findings to decision-makers. Short-term outcomes include increased collaboration across required sectors, improved knowledge and skills among youth and adult leaders, increased awareness of substance use risks, strengthened coalition infrastructure, and improved access to prevention resources. Intermediate outcomes include enhanced protective factors among participating youth, increased perception of risk and peer/parental disapproval of substance use, improved referral coordination, strengthened internal organizational policies, and reduced environmental access to substances. Long-term outcomes include measurable reductions in youth 30-day use of alcohol, marijuana, and prescription drugs as assessed through the DFC Four Core Measures. PYC will collect and report annual Core Measures data in coordination with the DFC National Cross-Site Evaluation and will use performance monitoring tools, digital analytics, training evaluations, and mapping data to guide continuous improvement. All activities will comply with applicable federal requirements and will be implemented through a structured, multi-sector coalition representing education, youth-serving organizations, healthcare, law enforcement, media, government, business, civic organizations, parents, and youth. Through coordinated, evidence-informed, community-driven strategies, this project aims to strengthen the prevention infrastructure of Brandywine Hundred and create sustained reductions in youth substance misuse over the five-year period of performance.
