The federal government’s Drug-Free Communities Grant was awarded to two organizations in Southeast Ohio. The River Hills Prevention Connection of Lawrence County and the Adams County Youth Prevention Coalition were each awarded $625,000 toward reducing drug and alcohol misuse.
The grant money will be awarded in $125,000 increments over 5 years, and both organizations can reapply after that period. The DFC grant has a difficult application and requires organizations to provide copious data as well as a highly detailed outline of how they would use the money.
Tami Graham, chair of the Adams County Medical Foundation, said the funding outline had to be exact.
“We had to have a very detailed budget,” Graham said. “So much so in fact that we have a coloring book that we want to give out to little kids about alcohol and tobacco, and we had to give how many of those we’re going to purchase.”
Graham said the award wouldn’t have been possible without the help of Holly Raffle and Ohio University. Before receiving the grant, ACYPC and River Hills had both received assistance from OU to help them collect data on drug and alcohol addiction in their counties.
Both organizations have worked closely with Raffle and her team at the Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Service where they assisted in grant writing and collecting data.
Raffle leads the Partnership for Community-Based Prevention which focuses on promoting healthy behaviors through assisting local organizations.
She said OU’s connection with ACYPC and River Hills began 8 years ago when they noticed a severe lack of information about Appalachian areas and limited data about substance misuse in Southeast Ohio.
They were not able to apply for grants or funding because they could not provide proof of why they needed it, she said.
“A lot of our Appalachian communities did not have any data, and they weren’t able to even come to the table to get grants,” Raffle said. “And if they never get the data, you’re in this cycle.”
OU received money through a federal agency called the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration and they could use some of the money in cooperation with ACYPC and River Hills to collect the necessary data.
Raffle and her team also helped train these organizations and teach them about strategies to address substance misuse in their communities. This helped the organizations to apply for the DFC grant.
With the DFC grant, ACYPC and River Hills hope to continue their work by expanding community efforts. Meagan Joseph, program manager at Impact Prevention, said River Hills plans to use the funding to provide more youth outreach in the Lawrence County community. Their goals are to provide education in high schools about substance misuse issues and also to start a youth-led prevention effort where students can hear from their peers.
“One of our sayings is ‘nothing for the youth, without the youth,’” Joseph said. “We kind of live in their ecosystem, and when they’re creating this and when their voice is heard, they’re able to make it what they need to be to thrive.”
Graham said the ACYPC plans to focus on prevention efforts in younger children by educating their parents on how to have substance-related conversations.
“Data shows that parents that are having those conversations about alcohol and tobacco and drugs to their children, it works,” Graham said. “Because children do not want to disappoint their parents.”
Raffle said their research has indicated that parents having conversations with their kids about substance misuse makes them less likely to use in the future. Parental and guardian communication with young people is crucial in preventing addiction.
Now that the grant process is over, Raffle and her team have taken a step back from the project since these organizations obtained the grant and Raffle provided all the necessary training and resources to succeed.
“It was just hard because we’ve worked so close with them for the last several years,” Graham said. “They’ve just made so many great connections for us.”
Raffle said she was honored that these organizations trusted her and her team to take them where they needed to go.
“It was just a tremendous honor to walk on that journey by their side,” Raffle said. “We learned a lot from them about how to work with communities and I hope that they learned a lot from us about how to serve their communities.”
