ROBERT PIERCE
• Leader & Times
The Liberal Area Coalition for Families is one of 10 coalitions to receive a portion of $367,000 in funding from the Kansas Department of Aging and Disability Services Behavior Health Services through the Fiscal Year 2025 Kansas Prevention Collaborative-Community Initiative (KPCCI) grants.
The goal of KPCCI is to reduce and prevent substance abuse in identified communities and enrich prevention efforts across the state by implementing and sustaining effective, culturally competent prevention strategies.
Grantees will create a comprehensive, community-based strategic plan that will result in community-driven strategies to reduce underage drinking, youth marijuana use, shared risk, protective factors and produce sustainable systems change.
Communities will use the Strategic Prevention Framework model designed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration to assess their local needs, build capacity and create a plan.
The KPCCI-funded Introduction and Planning Coalitions’s goal is to focus on community mobilization to increase readiness to address substance use and abuse issues related to alcohol use, marijuana use, fentanyl awareness and vaping use. These funds are intended for the focus of primary prevention efforts directed at individuals not identified as needing treatment services.
LACF Director Sarah Mersdorf-Foreman said Liberal had been through two previous rounds of SPF grants, one being from 2012 to 2016 and the other being 2016 through 2020, and with that in mind, the coalition will get $40,000 in funding this year to be split between Haskell County and Stevens County.
A community mobilizer will be part of one of the counties’ projects. Mersdorf-Foreman will be working with a group in Stevens County, with another group working in Haskell County.
“You identify people from 12 different sectors within the community to identify the biggest need in the prevention field they can target as a community,” she said. “When you think about prevention, that’s tobacco prevention, underage drinking prevention, prevention education, suicide prevention, anything that is a risky behavior or leads to risky behaviors. Those are the issues the group will look at.”
Naturally, Mersdorf-Foreman and other coalition leaders are excited to be receiving the money from KDADS.
“The coalition is just moving into Stevens and Haskell County and getting going over there,” she said. “This will give us the funds to be able to begin and also make us eligible for implementation funds, which will apply for next year, and that’s a much higher funding level that’s going to address the needs the group identified in the planning year.”
Mersdorf-Foreman said the money received from the grant could help LACF go further in its prevention education efforts.
“Minimally, it’ll help with education,” she said. “It provides us staff to help get more education out, to help manage social media, to help create social media and to spread the word on education and prevention. Hopefully, the reach will be beyond just Stevens and Haskell County, but also hit the community of Liberal.”
Mersdorf-Foreman is also excited to begin working on the program.
“It’s a great opportunity for both Haskell and Stevens County,” she said.
Mersdorf-Foreman said the first year of the grant is for planning, and out of this, she hopes a great impact will be made.
“They give us the opportunity to plan as a community,” she said. “There will be some education broadly provided, but as far as heavy programming or education, educational classes or other things, that won’t really be started until the implementation year. The state is very gracious in giving the community that entire year to plan and think about what is unique to their community and what will make the biggest impact during the implementation time. As far as impact, we hope this year of planning will hope us plan for implementation to make the biggest impact.”
Other coalitions receiving money from the KDADS grant include:
• Kingman County Health Coalition
• Miami County Mental Health Institute
• Woodson County Coalition
• Barber County United
• Medical Society of Sedgwick
• Healthy Bourbon County Action, Inc.
• Youth Educational Empowerment Program
• Neosho County Agency Resource Team (NCART)
• Republic County
“KDADS is excited to be able to support and empower these community-based organizations in the development of sustainable prevention plans,” KDADS Behavioral Health Services Commissioner Drew Adkins said. “This initiative and these funds are a significant step toward fostering a strong community focused on SUD prevention efforts among youth and young adults.”
Utilizing funding and technical assistance, community coalitions will analyze local data that is contributing to substance abuse within their identified geographic area.
Resources and technical assistance will be provided to review the local assessment profile, logic model, and action plan to address these issues using the five-step Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF) process (i.e., assessment, capacity building, planning, implementation, and evaluation). This will also include reviewing plans for sustainability, cultural competence, and evaluation.
The KPCCI program is intended to reduce and prevent substance use/abuse for youth and young adults in communities across the state and enrich prevention efforts through the implementation and sustainability of effective, culturally competent prevention strategies.
KDADS and the Kansas Prevention Collaborative (KPC) support communities, including training and technical assistance, to ensure that the grantees have the best plan to build capacity and establish a sustainability plan to execute effective, evidence-based strategies and activities in the community.
The coalitions awarded grants will be supported in their efforts by KDADS and its partners in the KPC.
About the Kansas Prevention Collaborative
The Kansas Prevention Collaborative was created in 2015 to integrate and innovate behavioral health prevention efforts.
A partnership of several different state, educational, and provider agencies, the KPC’s goal is to expand prevention efforts to be more inclusive of mental health promotion, suicide prevention, and problem gambling education and awareness, as well as to increase the availability of resources to adequately fund local-level prevention and promotion strategic plans.
For more information, visit www.kdads.ks.gov/commissions/behavioral-health/services-and-programs .
The KPC’s website can be viewed at kansaspreventioncollaborative.org.
