Youth Substance Use Prevention Starts With Community Voice

How culturally responsive partnerships can strengthen youth wellness and build healthier communities

Effective youth substance use prevention begins by listening to young people and families. When communities combine lived experience, cultural knowledge, and reliable data, they can develop prevention strategies that are more relevant, responsive, and sustainable.

At Training To Impact LLC (TTI), we believe youth wellness efforts should recognize community strengths, value cultural knowledge, and provide meaningful opportunities for young people and families to influence the decisions that affect them.

Through our work with Empoderando Familias and the Washington County Strategic Prevention Framework Community Advisory Board, TTI has helped communities move from listening and data collection to shared leadership, prevention planning, and action.

What Is Community-Based Youth Substance Use Prevention?

Community-based youth substance use prevention brings together young people, families, schools, service providers, culturally specific organizations, and public agencies to identify local needs and develop coordinated strategies.

This approach recognizes that prevention is more effective when communities help define both the challenges and the solutions.

Families understand the pressures young people face. Youth know which messages feel authentic and which services may be difficult to access. Community leaders recognize the cultural strengths, relationships, and resources that can support wellness.

However, this knowledge does not always reach the organizations and public systems responsible for developing programs, allocating resources, and making decisions.

Culturally responsive community engagement can help close that gap.

Listening to Families Through Empoderando Familias

TTI supported Empoderando Familias to better understand family and community perspectives related to youth wellness and substance use prevention across Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington counties.

This community-informed process included:

• 350 surveys and a focus group in Washington County
• Two community groups in Multnomah County
• Three workgroups with families in rural areas of Clackamas County

These engagement activities provided opportunities for families and community members to share their experiences, identify local strengths, discuss concerns, and describe the types of support they believed would benefit young people.

This work was not limited to collecting data. The goal was to understand what families and community members were experiencing and help partners use that information to guide prevention planning.

Turning Community Knowledge Into Action

Community data is most valuable when people can understand it, discuss it, and use it.

TTI analyzed the quantitative and qualitative information collected through the Empoderando Familias initiative and developed county-specific reports for Clackamas, Multnomah, and Washington counties. We also prepared a regional report that brought together findings from all three counties.

TTI then supported the Empoderando Familias team in presenting the findings to more than 20 community leaders representing multiple sectors across the region.

The findings were shared in an accessible and culturally grounded format. This created opportunities for leaders to reflect on what community members had shared, discuss the implications, and consider how the information could support coordinated prevention efforts.

The process contributed to actionable recommendations emphasizing:

• Stronger support for families
• Meaningful opportunities for youth leadership
• Culturally responsive community engagement
• Accessible prevention programs and services
• Greater collaboration among communities, service providers, and public systems

This experience reinforced an important lesson: data does not speak for itself. It must be interpreted within the cultural and community context and connected to the experiences of the people whose lives it represents.

Building Relationships and Connection in Washington County

As part of this work, TTI also helped convene more than 70 community members from diverse backgrounds in Washington County.

The gathering created space for people to build relationships, learn about local prevention efforts, exchange ideas, and strengthen their sense of connection and belonging.

These relationships are essential to youth wellness and substance use prevention. Prevention efforts become stronger when families, young people, schools, community organizations, healthcare providers, culturally specific organizations, and public agencies understand how their work is connected.

Community gatherings can also help participants identify shared priorities, recognize existing resources, and begin building the trust needed for continued collaboration.

From Community Engagement to Shared Leadership

TTI continued this work as part of the Design and Implementation Team supporting the Washington County Health and Human Services Strategic Prevention Framework initiative.

The Strategic Prevention Framework, commonly known as SPF, is a data-informed planning process developed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration. It helps communities assess their needs, build capacity, develop plans, implement strategies, and evaluate their efforts.

Cultural responsiveness and sustainability should be integrated throughout every stage of the process.

A central part of Washington County’s initiative was establishing a Community Advisory Board, or CAB.

The CAB provides an ongoing structure through which community members can:

• Review and interpret community information
• Identify strengths, needs, and priorities
• Assess available resources and remaining gaps
• Contribute to prevention planning
• Recommend strategies
• Support community accountability
• Help guide long-term prevention efforts

Instead of limiting community participation to one survey, focus group, or event, the CAB creates opportunities for continued engagement and shared leadership.

TTI’s role has included supporting community engagement, facilitating meetings, making complex information easier to understand, and helping create conditions in which members can participate meaningfully.

Learn more about the Washington County Strategic Prevention Framework initiative.

What Makes a Community Advisory Board Effective?

Establishing a community advisory board is only the beginning. For a CAB to meaningfully influence youth substance use prevention, members need more than a seat at the table. They need information, preparation, relationships, and genuine opportunities to shape decisions.

An effective community advisory board should:

• Include members with diverse lived and professional experiences
• Create welcoming, accessible, and culturally responsive meetings
• Present technical information in clear language
• Build trust and relationships among members
• Provide training and leadership development
• Give members meaningful opportunities to influence priorities
• Explain how community recommendations will be considered and used
• Invest in the knowledge and leadership of community members
• Maintain consistent communication between meetings

These practices can help transform an advisory board from a consultation group into an active partner in prevention planning.

What We Are Learning About Youth Wellness and Prevention

Our work with Empoderando Familias and the Washington County Community Advisory Board has reinforced several important lessons.

1. Listening must come before planning. Communities should have opportunities to define their strengths, concerns, and priorities before organizations select prevention strategies.
2. Youth and families are essential prevention partners Programs and services are more relevant when the people most affected by an issue help shape the response.
3. Information must be accessible. Reports and data should be presented in ways that community members can understand, discuss, question, and apply.
4. Trust requires consistency. A single meeting cannot create sustainable community engagement. Trust grows when organizations communicate openly, follow through on their commitments, and continue involving community members throughout the process.
5. Culture is central to prevention. Language, identity, family relationships, migration experiences, community history, and cultural knowledge can influence how people understand youth wellness, substance use, prevention, and support.
6. Relationships are part of the prevention infrastructure. Strong relationships among families, youth, organizations, and public systems make it easier to coordinate resources, share information, and respond to emerging needs.
7. Sustainable change depends on shared leadership. Prevention efforts are stronger when leadership and responsibility are shared among community members, organizations, and public agencies.

A Culturally Responsive Model for Prevention

TTI supports counties, coalitions, public agencies, schools, and community organizations through services such as:

• Community engagement and culturally responsive outreach
• Youth and family listening sessions
• Focus groups and community workgroups
• Quantitative and qualitative data analysis
• Strategic Prevention Framework planning
• Community advisory board development and facilitation
• Translation of complex data into accessible findings
• Cross-sector collaboration
• Training and capacity building
• Program evaluation and continuous improvement

This model can be adapted to reflect the needs, cultures, strengths, and resources of different communities.

The goal is not to bring a predetermined solution into a community. The goal is to create a process through which community members and partners can develop informed, realistic, and sustainable strategies together.

Building Healthier Futures Together

Youth wellness is a shared responsibility. Supporting it requires listening, trust, cultural humility, reliable information, and sustained collaboration.

When young people and families are treated as partners, data becomes more meaningful. When community members have a genuine role in planning, prevention strategies become more responsive. When organizations work across communities and sectors, they are better positioned to create lasting change.

Training To Impact helps partners move from community listening to shared action.

If your county, coalition, organization, school, or community is seeking support with youth substance use prevention, community engagement, Strategic Prevention Framework planning, culturally responsive data analysis, or advisory board development, we would be honored to collaborate with you.

Contact Training To Impact to discuss how we can support your community’s youth wellness and prevention goals.

About the Author

Ana Ruiz Morillo is the Founder and Director of Training To Impact LLC. Her work brings together education, public health, prevention, facilitation, community engagement, leadership development, and cross-sector collaboration. She holds an MBA and a bachelor’s degree in education and is also a Certified Mediator, Restorative Justice Facilitator, and adjunct instructor she teaches about Latino Family and Culture in Pacific University’s Master of Social Work program.