Project

TOGETHER! Communities for Drug Free Youth

Project Description

Through Together! Communities for Drug Free Youth, more than 50 communities in Washington and Oregon planned and carried out comprehensive drug abuse prevention programs. In collaboration with Washington State University’s Cooperative Extension and the Oregon Office of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Programs, the project provided an effective, replicable, community-mobilization model to strengthen a community’s ability to do long-range, outcome-based planning, and to involve a broad, diverse representation of community leadership. Local community boards used the Communities That Care© planning process to build their capacity to use community-specific data for assessment, prioritization, planning, and evaluation. Community members learned about risk and protective factors and how to use a step-by-step process to assess their communities’ risks and resources and harness all their resources to create a community-specific strategy for addressing youth issues.