Does it seem increasingly difficult not only to effectively reach community members but also to engage them in advancing your prevention goals? With so many of us struggling with limited time and balancing competing priorities, community engagement has never been more challenging. At the same time, it’s also never been more important to prevention success.

Join us for this opportunity to connect with other experienced prevention practitioners (with five or more years in the prevention field) in HHS Region 2 and beyond to explore how to meaningfully and authentically work with community members to enact change and promote health and well-being at the population level. Participants will explore strategies for engaging and mobilizing key community agents in substance misuse prevention, share tools they have used in support of outreach and engagement efforts and discuss steps taken to help community members resolve any barriers to participation they encounter.

Please come ready to share your experiences, ask questions and actively engage in the conversation!

Presenters:

Jessica Goldberg, MSW, MPH, CPS is a training & technical assistance specialist with Education Development Center (EDC). For more than 15 years, Jess has specialized in building capacity to improve behavioral health at the national, state, regional and local levels. Her areas of expertise include preventing youth substance use; promoting cross-sector collaborations; addressing health disparities; strategic planning, logic model development, and sustainability planning.

Tracy Desovich, MPH, CPS - Tracy has over 30 years of experience in substance abuse prevention and public health. Her expertise includes community health assessment, planning, organizing and evaluation, leadership development, utilizing data to mobilize change, social norms marketing and healthy communities’ principles.

Teresa Gomez, MA, MS is a Training & Technical Assistance specialist with EDC. For more than a decade, Teresa managed public & private global health efforts for European organizations.  Her areas of focus include substance misuse prevention, behavioral health, social interventions for young people, and meeting the needs of underserved women.