Below you will find a summary of the questions and comments that were posted by event participants and facilitators when this event ran November 26th-30th, 2001.

Many of you shared suggestions for coordinating community resources and services for youth, which included the following:

• Convene youth service providers to enhance information-sharing, promote greater coordination, and lessen duplication of services.

• Provide regular opportunities for community agency representatives and teachers to meet and share needs and resources.

• Establish committees to discuss service issues and assess needs and concerns regarding youth and/or identify committees or coalitions that are already in place.

Strategies for "drawing people in and getting them excited" about a new prevention initiative included the following:

• Do your legwork. Find out who might be interested and receptive, then make phone calls.

• Describe project goals so prospective participants have a clear understanding of who you are and what you're about. Point out how and where your goals and their goals may overlap.

• Highlight the connection between prevention and academic achievement.

Several MSCs debated whether it is "better" to join an existing, citywide planning group or establish a school-specific committee.

• Sitting on citywide groups allows you to "bring school issues to the table." It also lets others know how you can be of service to them. As one MSC described it, "the more we make ourselves available to both site staff and community members, the more they do for us."

• On the other hand, site-specific teams may have a better sense of project ownership, and are more likely to focus directly on the needs of students. Before creating a new team at your school, however, make sure to connect with teams that are already in place.

• Ultimately, most MSCs participate in both school-specific and community-wide planning teams.

Several MSCs described difficulties bringing mental health professionals on board who are willing to provide services to students and training to teachers.

Suggested strategies for overcoming this obstacle included the following:

• Connect with not-for-profit youth agencies that have mental health professionals on staff.

• Collaborate with local colleges, including professors in the area of mental health, MSWs who may want more school-based experience, or internship programs.

• Work with the local crisis response team and/or county-level social workers.

• Explore the availability of local funding for mental health in schools, such as a Family & Children's Collaborative, as well as state and federal insurance programs for youth.

Many MSCs presented strategies for connecting prevention to academic achievement, character development, and improved personal, social, and health skills, including the following:

• Look at your school's vision statement. It may explicitly connect academic achievement to reductions in risk behaviors.

• Provide concrete examples of how prevention programs can be woven into the curriculum. For example, one MSC currently implementing an integrated prevention program described how the videos of kids talking about their problems "set the stage for further discussions and academic assignments that are linked to national standards."

• Take a school-wide approach to prevention rather than bringing in another add-on program that teachers need to find the time to implement.

• Try mapping program objectives onto state standards (e.g., for Social Studies or Language Arts) and see how they match up.

• Get in on the ground floor! One MSC has joined her school's Leadership Team so she will have a voice in policy development. Another MSC is helping to define a new category in her district's strategic plan called "Safety and Belonging."

• Rather than focus on a single issue, recognize that many programs promote a healthy relationship between school and students, as well as effective decision-making in all areas of life.

• Finally, recognize that a single program may not meet all the needs of a school.

Several MSCs described how they have incorporated service learning into their prevention programs.

For example:

• One district in Florida has developed Peace! …Pass it On, a service learning program based on the Aggressors, Victims, and Bystanders (AVB) curriculum. Middle school students participating in the program develop their own teaching tools, which they then use to teach their feeder elementary schools peaceful solutions to conflict. The students have also taken their project to several community groups. According to the MSC spearheading the program, "it's been a great way to get both community and school buy-in to service learning."

Another MSC described an interesting program designed to increase community awareness and affect social norms.

• Designed by the Montana Social Norms Project, the "Most of Us" campaign counters student perceptions that ATOD use is higher than it actually is. According to the MSC, "This ignorance of the facts increases the power of negative peer pressure on kids. The Most of Us campaign uses marketing phrases such as "Most of Us DON'T smoke" to empower students to resist the pressure from the "user" minority."

MSCs also presented strategies for increasing parent awareness of and involvement in prevention activities, which included the following:

• Contribute a regular column to the school newspaper.

• Showcase various community-wide programs and initiatives, including your prevention initiative, at regularly scheduled events for students, families, and community members.

• Make yourself visible. Attend PTA and school committee meetings, or "any other meetings in which parents are likely to be in attendance."

• Link your parenting programs to Safe Schools and Drug Education. Follow initial, introductory sessions about your programs with more targeted sessions on particular program components.