Prevention is a privilege: Implementing drug-free community coalitions in Black communities

Abstract

Community-based interventions for youth substance use prevention require high levels of capacity to organize and coordinate community resources to support youth development and create opportunities to prevent youth substance use. This project aimed to better understand what Black prevention practitioners perceive as the requirements for a successful drug-free community coalition. Black prevention practitioners, who were engaged in drug-free community funded coalitions, had discussions about coalitions as a strategy for youth substance use prevention in Black communities. These facilitated discussions resulted in consensus over a set of nine core principles regarding successful youth substance use prevention coalition building in these communities.

Keywords:

• Youth
• substance use
• prevention
• Black
• community coalitions

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the University of Maryland Prevention Research Center cooperative agreement #U48 DP006382 from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). This work was also supported by the Ward 8 Drug-free Community Coalition grant #SP020480 from the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Any interpretations and opinions expressed herein are solely those of the authors and may not reflect those of CDC and SAMHSA.