Building State Capacity For Preventing Youth Substance Use and Violence Program Grant Awards

New Hampshire Department of Education (NH DOE) has been awarded a competitive federal grant for $125,000 toward building state capacity to address the state wide initiative on Preventing Youth Substance Use and Violence.

The purpose of the Building State Capacity for Preventing Youth Substance Use and Violence program is to provide competitive grants to State Educational Agencies (SEAs) to build and sustain capacity to prevent youth substance use and violence and support collaboration between SEAs and other State agencies that are involved in efforts to prevent these problems.

The four major goals of New Hampshire’s program are:

• building collaboration within programs at the Department of Education,
• building collaboration among agencies in New Hampshire working with substance abuse and violence issues,
• developing an evidence-based resource guide for schools and communities, and
• providing technical assistance and high quality professional development to schools and communities.

In addition, the grant will support the development of professional programs on the topics of bullying and school climate to support the new state Pupil Safety and Violence Prevention Act signed into law signed by Governor Lynch. The grant will be for one year and started October 1, 2010.

NH DOE will use the funds to build collaboration within the programs of the NHDOE; build collaboration with the Department of Health and Human Services and the Bureau of Drug and Alcohol to develop education and prevention training for schools and communities; develop evidence-based resource guides for schools and communities; and provide technical assistance and high-quality professional development to schools and communities. A train-the-trainer model supported by a comprehensive web-based resource guide will be used to foster sustainability of the efforts at the local level.

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