Partnering with Community-Based Organizations to Prevent Youth Substance Use

July 21, 2026 | Rachel Scheckman, Caitlin Langhorne Griffith

State and territorial health agencies (S/THAs) are uniquely positioned to support community-driven prevention work, especially where issues like adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), suicide, overdose, and mental health-related concerns intersect. The challenges that occur at the intersection are linked across the life course and often compound each other. Early adversity can increase the risk of substance use, mental health challenges, suicidal behavior, and overdose later in life.

ACEs research consistently shows that children exposed to trauma — such as caregiver substance use, mental illness, or the loss of a parent to suicide or overdose — face elevated risk of injury and death later in life, including suicide and overdose-related outcomes. These outcomes are driven by shared risk factors at the individual, family, community, and societal levels (e.g., social isolation, lack of access to care, and early initiation of substance use) and influenced by shared protective factors, too (e.g., connected relationships, effective health education programs, youth engagement, and prevention-focused local policies). Addressing these shared drivers together…

• Requires multi-sector buy-in at the local level.
• Allows agencies to move beyond siloed programming.
• Ensures they can support evidence-based prevention strategies with broader impact, such as youth substance use prevention.        

While state agencies focus on higher-level strategies, they can ensure local coordination by partnering with community-based organizations (CBOs) who can promote prevention strategies, including community involvement, peer group support, positive school climate, family involvement, and youth leadership and engagement.

Examples of Community-Based Partnerships in Public Health

The following examples demonstrate how CBOs and public health agencies can work together to enhance local data collection and sustain community‑driven prevention efforts.

The East Boston Alliance for Support, Treatment, Intervention, and Education

The East Boston Alliance for Support, Treatment, Intervention, and Education (EASTIE), founded in 2016 and led by NeighborHealth, mobilizes youth, families, and community partners to prevent and reduce youth substance use through a comprehensive public health approach. EASTIE serves East Boston, an area of Boston heavily affected by overdose. Highlights include:

• EASTIE emphasizes fostering positive childhood experiences (PCEs) to strengthen protective factors and reduce substance use risk among youth, guided by the Healthy Outcomes from Positive Experiences (HOPE) framework. A growing body of research shows that PCEs can mitigate the long-term effects of ACEs, including the mental health challenges that lead many young people in East Boston to use substances as a coping strategy.
• EASTIE works closely with the Boston Public Health Commission (BPHC) to address gaps in neighborhood-level data. These gaps affect their ability to design more targeted and responsive prevention strategies. Because Boston’s Youth Risk Behavior Survey data is not disaggregated by neighborhood, EASTIE conducts additional community-level substance use surveys and advocates for improvements to population-level youth data collection. They also work with East Boston Middle Schools to assess the impact of their programs.
• EASTIE has launched a Youth Mental Health Council with the support of BPHC to improve localized data collection and to advance youth-led mental health activities. Youth (primarily from East Boston) meet monthly for training in mental health education, trauma-informed practices, community-based research, and collaborative planning. The Council will design and administer a community survey to complement existing Youth Risk Behavior Survey data by collecting data on more localized needs, with the results informing new project plans and guiding evaluation of activity impacts.
• Collaboration and active participation in prevention and public health initiatives are cornerstones of EASTIE’s success, according to EASTIE Director Nancy Slamet, and are apparent in EASTIE’s work with community members, BPHC, local schools, and others. BPHC will continue to provide capacity building and support the implementation of initiatives identified through the Council’s research and advocacy. Including and supporting youth leadership in this program provides PCEs, consistent with the HOPE framework and broader public health frameworks. Localized data collection enables more targeted public health interventions within the community, thereby increasing program effectiveness.

EASTIE’s partnership-driven approach demonstrates how CBOs and public health agencies can work together to expand local data, elevate youth voices, and strengthen community-centered prevention. By integrating youth leadership and data-informed strategies into its public health efforts, EASTIE is helping build a more resilient East Boston where young people and families can thrive.

The Mohave Substance Treatment Education and Prevention Partnership

The Mohave Substance Treatment Education and Prevention Partnership (MSTEPP) was established in 2007 and formalized as a nonprofit in 2009. Since then, it has grown into a regional leader in preventing substance use across Mohave County, AZ. MSTEPP expanded significantly after receiving several federal grants, starting in 2019, and is now recognized as the primary community-led initiative to address substance use disorders across the county.

Mohave County has faced some of the highest overdose burdens in the state. In 2025, it recorded the highest overdose death rate in Arizona. This context underscores the importance of MSTEPP’s regional collaborations, its work to reduce overdose and other substance use-related injuries, and its focus on upstream prevention through its youth engagement. Highlights include:

• Collaboration is foundational to the organization, with MSTEPP Project Director Robert De Vries explaining that this approach allows them to easily resolve challenges — which are few and far between due to the collaborative nature of their prevention work.
• MSTEPP maintains active partnerships with the Mohave County Department of Public Health, Kingman Regional Medical Center, local law enforcement, and the school district. MSTEPP also collaborates with county agencies, including Kingman Regional Medical Center and Mohave County Department of Health, to strengthen its community-wide prevention efforts. Together, they have developed county health assessments, health improvement plans, and a county-wide overdose mapping system. Their work also supports the county’s opioid overdose fatality review team. These partnerships help ensure that prevention strategies are coordinated, data-informed, and grounded in community needs.
• MSTEPP coordinates a range of public health prevention initiatives to improve community well-being. This includes ensuring that local law enforcement agencies maintain access to opioid overdose reversal medications like naloxone. These initiatives reflect a comprehensive strategy aligned with evidence-based prevention and overdose response.
• MSTEPP partnered with the Kingman Unified School District to launch a Teachers as Mentors Program, promoting protective factors among youth. This program provides students with a teacher or staff member they can engage with daily during the school day. The initiative complements MSTEPP’s youth coalition, which offers leadership development, mentorship, and meaningful opportunities for youth to contribute to prevention efforts and build resilience.  

MSTEPP’s broad prevention strategies, including youth development, community outreach, and systems-level planning with regional partners, reflect a modern public health model. This integrated collaborative approach addresses risk and protective factors across the life course.

Mutual Support for Wide-Spanning Impact

EASTIE and MSTEPP demonstrate how sustained collaboration between public health and community organizations strengthens prevention efforts and creates more resilient, better supported communities. Overall, CBOs and public health agencies can support each other’s work in a variety of ways, thereby increasing impact.

Community Outreach to Drive Prevention

• S/THAs can coordinate with CBOs to disseminate opioid overdose reversal medications, connect hard-to-reach populations to services, and educate the public on topics important for community health. Together, they can broaden the reach of these resources into the community.
• Organizations can function as trusted sources and/or local conveners expanding the reach of public health communications.

Expanding Capacity for CBOs

• Community organizations seeking grant funding may need support from leaders in their jurisdictions. S/THAs can act in this capacity, increasing their voice and reach in communities.
• In cases where community organizations must find matching funds from non-federal sources (e.g., state and local agencies), S/THAs can directly fund or influence other agencies in supporting CBO work.
• S/THAs can make funding available that complements local work, helping CBOs use data to inform upstream prevention strategies.

Improving Local Data and Assessment

• S/THAs can work with organizations to develop data collection and implementation plans tailored to specific community needs.
• S/THAs can support improved local data collection efforts by considering additions to statewide surveys that provide useful information for substance use prevention and access to local data reports from those efforts.

Special thanks to EASTIE and MSTEPP for their contributions to this blog.