Thank you for participating in the 2017 CUMU Annual Conference: The Urban Advantage. Take some time to explore the program and create a customized schedule. Use the search and filter functions to view presentations by date, presentation type, keyword, presenter, and home institution. You can also save a seat for yourself in limited-occupancy sessions.
There is no vaccine to prevent young people from using alcohol, marijuana and other drugs, but there are evidence based prevention programs that can reduce the risk of substance use disorders. Moving away from ineffective “scared straight” models and focusing on prevention efforts based on theories of growth, development and human behavior that extend beyond the classroom and home have demonstrated encouraging findings. Further, university-community partnerships are noted as impactful approaches to addressing “wicked problems” in communities with deeply entrenched social norms and high availability of substances. Using a collective impact approach, Tackling Youth Substance Abuse (TYSA), a cross-sector community coalition on Staten Island (SI), formed in 2011 to address high prevalence of underage drinking and prescription drug misuse among young people. Guided by principles of collective impact, TYSA aligns the work of diverse partners and seeks to maximize impact by coordinating efforts across SI. Wagner College, a local SI University, has been instrumental in the coalition’s activities since its inception. This partnership facilitated a relationship between Wagner faculty, students and community-based programs through experiential learning and community engagement opportunities. Through membership, Wagner has gained access to prevention, treatment and recovery providers, elected officials, school personnel, parents, youth, pharmacists and a host of additional stakeholders all working towards reducing the burden of youth and young adult substance use in the community. Through comprehensive environmental approaches across the continuum of services, this multi-sectoral collaborative has begun to observe reductions in alcohol consumption and prescription drug misuse prevalence among SI youth.
