RIO GRANDE COUNTY-Rio Grande Prevention Partners (RGPP) is a coalition that focuses on creating a healthy community for all youth and community members to thrive in. RGPP has been in existence since 2006 and works with different community agencies, such as education, law enforcement, parents, local government agencies and elected officials, youth serving organizations and more importantly youth to analyze issues in the community that affect youth and works together to find solutions for these issues. RGPP received funding from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment to use the Communities That Care (CTC) process.

CTC is an evidence-based process that helps communities address problems, such as substance abuse, depression and suicide that affect youth. RGPP serves the entirety of Rio Grande County and considers the county the target community under the CTC grant. The CTC process uses assessments, including the biannual Healthy Kids Colorado Survey, to determine the community’s most prominent risk factors and a community’s strongest protective factors, and then uses a menu of strategies and evidence based practices to address the risk factors and reinforce the protective factors. In early 2018 the coalition selected “Low Neighborhood Attachment and Community Disorganization” and “Early Initiation of Problem Behavior (substance use)” as the targeted risk factors and “Opportunities for Pro-social Involvement in the Community Domain” as the protective factor.

As part of the CTC process, on Sept. 3, RGPP voted unanimously on two community strategies “Promote Social Development Strategy and Positive Youth Development and in the community” and “Build support for youth spaces.” The vote included representatives from Rio Grande County Public Health, High Valley Community Center, Monte Vista Kids Connection and youth representatives. These are the strategies that RGPP will focus on for the reminder of the CTC grant cycle in order to address the previously selected risk factors.

The selection of strategies moves RGPP into the fourth step of the five step CTC process, outlined below by the Center for Communities that Care, University of Washington.

Getting Started: all the behind-the-scenes work to get a community ready to go. Key Community leaders decide to bring CTC into the community. They, in turn, invite a diverse group of stakeholders to get involved.

Get Organized:  where you form a community board, organize into workgroups and develop a task list and a timeline to carry out the next steps.

Create a Profile: all about assessment. This is where you look at date from your community’s youth to create a profile of the priorities.

Create a Plan: where you put all of this work together to create an action plan for your community’s prevention network.

Implement and Evaluate:  where you put all of this planning into action!  You implement the programs, policies and strategies that you choose; and you measure results and track progress over time to see if you’re getting the improvement in kids’ health and behavior that you planned for.

The fifth step will be evaluated and repeated as necessary to get positive, measurable outcomes for Rio Grande County. The programs selected are also required by the Communities That Care process to utilize the Social Development Strategy and Positive Youth Development as the framework for working with youth. The Social Development Strategy uses the foundation of clear standards, bonding and acknowledging the individual characteristics of the involved youth, while providing them with opportunities, skills and recognition to keep them on the path to healthy behaviors. Positive Youth Development is an approach of how to work with youth that helps them grow, prosper and reach their potential. It is a movement across the state of Colorado to engage youth as equal partners in a meaningful way that will help them augment their skills by providing opportunities. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment defines it as a “...strengths based view of adolescence. This approach focuses on helping youth acquire the knowledge and skills they need to become healthy and productive adults.” Positive Youth Development and the Social Development Strategy go hand in hand.

RGPP will utilize these strategies and evidence based practices to in their overall mission to prevent substance abuse and damaging behaviors in local youth. The coalition has one more year in their grant cycle before they will use the evidence gathered from these methods and reapply for the CTC grant, overseen by CDPHE.

The coalition meets the first Tuesday of every month at 1:30 either in Del Norte or in Monte Vista. Currently, RGPP is in need of parents or guardians and business owners to serve on the coalition and/or in the multiple workgroups contributing to RGPP’s mission. If you want to help in solving the issues plaguing our community and youth, please contact Nancy Molina, Prevention Coordinator at (719)657-3352 or at [email protected].