The coalition serves asheville and buncombe county north carolina, a community of 231,452.the goals of the coalition are establish and strengthen community collaboration in support of local effort…

The coalition serves asheville and buncombe county north carolina, a community of 231,452.the goals of the coalition are establish and strengthen community collaboration in support of local effort to prevent and reduce youth substance use. The coalition will achieve its goals by implementing these strategies: by enhancing access to partnership participation and collaboration by developing a "community talks" initiative where different events are held in strategies parts of the community specifically for people who are not currently involved with the partnership; engaging community stakeholders that are not currently involved such as the university, community colleges, city council, and the commissioners that are largely represented in the buncombe county area; empowering the school resource officers by providing trainings on underage drinking and how to work with youth who may be using alcohol and/or prescription drugs and their families at all 7 high schools; conducting a regular alcohol compliance checks on a random sample of alcohol outlets and events throughout the county to reduce youth access to alcohol and holding two prescription drug take backs within the county to remove unwanted/unused or expired medications from the community in order to reduce youth access to prescription drugs