PreventionFIRST

Center for Community Engagement- The purpose of this program is to build and strengthen the capacity of local neighborhoods to engage in prevention. This is done primarily through training, technical assistance and mini-grants. Activities included assessing and monitoring the level of development among member coalitions across the region, building awareness, readiness and capacity of community constituents to participate in a local neighborhood anti-drug coalition, identifying and pursuing opportunities to address the identified gaps in development among member coalitions, leveraging state and national resources for use on the regional level and through the local member coalitions, and evaluating the effectiveness of local member coalitions to impact community change.

Center for Prevention Science - The purpose of this program is to increase data driven decision making for effective prevention programs. Activities included review of comprehensive assessments of youth substance use/misuse in the region, monitoring biennial PreventionFIRST! Student Survey process and findings, review of evaluation on the effectiveness of PreventionFIRST! to bring about community level change related to the identified youth substance use/misuse problems, and identifying and supporting research and publication opportunities related to longitudinal PreventionFIRST! Student Survey data.