Palisades, Pennridge, Quakertown, Bucks County, Pennsylvania
Upper Bucks Healthy Communities • Healthy Youth Coalition (UBC) operates within the boundaries of the Palisades, Pennridge, and Quakertown school districts, which have a combined population of 81,157. UBC serves a suburban area with many rural characteristics. The area is also culturally diverse, with ten percent of its population belonging to a racial or ethnic minority.
UBC’s goals include:
- reducing substance abuse among youth and, over time, among adults by addressing the factors that serve to increase the risk of substance abuse (CTC risk factors) as well as the protective factors (defined by the Developmental Assets) that serve to minimize the risk of substance abuse and
- to develop strategies for program sustainability by enhancing and strengthening the collaboration of the UBC member institutions, associations, and citizens to more effectively leverage financial and human resources to prevent and reduce substance abuse among youth.
To achieve these goals, UBC will develop strategies to:
- increase awareness and understanding of the 40 Developmental Assets and the efficacy of protective factors;
- reduce drug and alcohol use within targeted sectors of the community;
- devise tools that help families and children effectively develop;
- provide support to existing efforts that enhance protective factors;
- recognize the efforts of those working to promote healthy lifestyles in families;
- reduce the availability of cigarettes to youth;
- conduct tobacco audits of retail outlets that sell tobacco products; and
- initiate two new strategies:
- the implementation of science-based programs in school and community domains and
- the improvement of citizen involvement in UBC by expanding the number of opportunities for involvement.
Assets in Action
Supporting Students with Upper Bucks HC • HY's Student Support Card
Upper Bucks Healthy Communities • Healthy Youth Coalition (UB HC • HY) used the results of a recent Attitudes and Behaviors survey to create a “Student Support Card“ (UBSSC) for their community. The document displays the current levels of Developmental Assets that Upper Bucks’ youth have and the change that has taken place since their baseline measure in 2002-2004. By highlighting “reasons to celebrate” and “reasons to stay connected,” the support card clearly points out places where the community has seen improvement and where youth still need support.
As UB HC • HY explains, “The UBSSC is not a gauge to judge what is lacking. Rather, it is a strength-based measure to find out what supports do exist, and build upon that foundation.MORE
Positive Prevention in Upper Bucks County
One of the coalition’s major projects is the Social Norms initiative, a project aimed at changing the perceptions of teens, which began after the results from the community’s 2006 Profiles of Student Life: Attitudes and Behaviors survey showed that sixty-five percent of students did not use alcohol.MORE
Bucks youth coalition gets kudos from feds
It’s not often that rural Upper Bucks is recognized nationally.
But that’s what happened when the U.S. government featured a local youth development group for its efforts to curb teen drinking and drug use.MORE
