EAU claire city-county health department SPF-PFS 2025: youth substance use prevention - the EAU claire city-county health department (eccchd) will partner with the EAU claire health alliance (echa) to…

The Department of Health and Human Services Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration awarded $750,000 to the City of Eau Claire on September 30, 2025, under the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Projects of Regional and National Significance program (CFDA 93.243) to implement evidence-based youth substance use prevention strategies in Eau Claire County, Wisconsin.

The City of Eau Claire, operating through its Health Department, will partner with the Eau Claire Health Alliance to prevent and reduce youth alcohol, vaping, and prescription drug misuse among students in grades 3–12, with emphasis on under-resourced rural areas and economically disadvantaged youth. Deliverables include supporting peer education groups in middle and high schools, implementing evidence-based prevention curriculum in schools, conducting community-wide campaigns to address social norms around youth substance use, and expanding community partnerships. The project will complete a Strategic Prevention Framework needs assessment within 180 days to identify data-driven prevention strategies targeting youth at highest risk. Performance occurs in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, with a period of performance through September 29, 2030.

EAU claire city-county health department SPF-PFS 2025: youth substance use prevention - the EAU claire city-county health department (eccchd) will partner with the EAU claire health alliance (echa) to strengthen and expand collaboration and capacity for implementing evidence-based practices to prevent and reduce youth alcohol, vaping, and prescription drug misuse. Our population of focus is youth in grades 3-12 in EAU claire county (ECC), with emphasis on under-resourced rural areas and youth at higher risk, such as those with low income, as identified by the youth risk behavior survey (yrbs). These youth are approximately 0.5% american indian/alaskan native, 8.1% asian, 2.4% black, 6.9% hispanic, 76.1% white, and 5.9% are two or more races. 48.1% of ECC youth are female, 50.9% are male, and 1.0% are other/unknown. Overall, about 37.1% of ECC youth are economically disadvantaged. Our project will focus on addressing risk and protective factors associated with youth substance use. This project will also increase community capacity to prevent and respond to youth substance use by increasing partnerships, especially communities serving under served and high-risk youth. Projects will include supporting peer education groups in ECC middle and high schools, implementing evidence-based curriculum to prevent substance misuse in schools to students in grades 3-12, implementing community-wide campaigns to address social norms around youth substance use, and increasing partnerships with the echa. Goal 1 of our project is to implement prevention strategies to address protective and risk factors to prevent and reduce alcohol, vaping, and prescription drug misuse among youth in ECC. Objective 1.1 is to use the strategic prevention framework to complete a needs assessment within 180 days to identify and select comprehensive, data-driven substance use prevention strategies to target youth in the county at highest risk for alcohol, vaping, and prescription drug misuse. Objective 1.2 is to begin implementing and evaluating evidence-based programs, policies, or practices to reduce by 1% each year the past 30-day use of alcohol and vaping, and ever use of prescription pain medication through year 5 among ECC high school students, focusing on highest risk youth, within 270 days. Objective 1.3 is to increase by 1% each year sense of belonging at school among youth as a protective factor against substance misuse through peer-to-peer programming in schools, focusing on youth at highest risk, through the end of year 5. Goal 2 of our project is to sustain and strengthen current community capacity and infrastructure through coalition and community partnerships to address primary substance use prevention concerns in ECC including alcohol, vaping, and prescription drug misuse among youth. Objective 2.1 is to identify at least two new partners serving higher-risk communities to provide oversight and guidance to community-level initiatives to address youth risk and protective factors and prevent youth alcohol, vaping, and prescription drug misuse by the end of year one. Objective 2.2 is to partner with the echa coalition to implement two community-level, evidence-based programs, practices, and policies to reduce alcohol, vaping, and prescription drug misuse among youth each year. In the first year of the project, we will serve an estimated 10,368 youth in grades 3-12. In years 2-5, we anticipate reaching approximately 956 additional incoming 3RD graders each year for a total number of unduplicated youth served throughout the lifetime of this project of 14,192.