CADCA is proud to spotlight nine youth leaders selected for its Voices of Youth program, a SAMHSA-funded initiative run by CADCA in partnership with the HOSA Future Health Professionals. These students received scholarships to attend CADCA’s 35th Annual National Leadership Forum in February, where they presented their community assessments and participated in youth-focused prevention trainings. They also received scholarships to attend CADCA’s 2025 Mid-Year Training Institute, July 20-24, in Nashville, TN, where they’ll present their completed projects.

On June 14, teens from across the state of Maryland gathered for the Take Back Your 10 (TB10) Youth Summit, a day dedicated to celebrating the high school students’ efforts throughout the year and exploring how tobacco shows up in their everyday lives. TB10 is a youth-led, adult-guided program aimed at promoting youth voices through education and awareness of how the tobacco industry markets in their own neighborhoods.

When you hear the word “healthy,” what immediately comes to mind? For many of us, the first thoughts are diet and exercise: eating well, staying active by hitting the gym, or cutting back on sugar. However, health is much more than that.  

In Western Kentucky, Graves County Agency for Substance Abuse Policy and Prevention (ASAP) is showing what’s possible when young people are trusted to lead. At the heart of their work is the Mayfield-Graves County Youth Council, a group of students who lead campaigns and events to further the coalition’s prevention efforts. 

Since 2020, CADCA and Walmart have partnered to educate community members about naloxone, a life-saving medication that can reverse an opioid overdose.

To bring the content to life, the webinar featured real-world examples from PreventEd and the Lincoln County Community Opioid Response Effort (CORE), two Missouri-based organizations working in partnership with CPHSS to integrate evaluation into their daily operations.

CADCA will be holding a webinar on June 17 at 2:00 PM, in which our Public Policy Consultant, Sue Thau, will provide a more detailed briefing about the President’s Budget Request including what we are advocating for with Congress and to answer questions from the field.

We talk a lot about bringing youth to the table and engaging them in coalition work, but what happens once they’re there? If we want to be serious about our prevention efforts, we must invest in youth leadership and make space for them to lead within the community coalition structure.

Seventeen members of CADCA’s National Youth Action Council (NYAC) gathered at our headquarters in Alexandria, VA, for the first-ever NYAC retreat. Held April 11-13, youth leaders engaged in workshops on goal setting and action planning and collaborated in small groups to develop projects on key issues like fentanyl awareness and social media education.

This spring, CADCA is honored to once again welcome two distinguished professionals through the prestigious Hubert H. Humphrey Fellowship Program, a Fulbright Exchange initiative that fosters learning and leadership development between the United States and countries around the world.

Originally founded as the Monroe County Drug and Alcohol Task Force, the coalition has grown and evolved over the years, but its mission has always stayed the same: mobilize communities, parents, and organizations to prevent youth substance use and reduce overall misuse and dependency in Monroe County.

CADCA has launched a new webinar series called Competencies in Focus. The first webinar took place on April 23 and highlighted the sustainability competency.

In 2022, the survey included an optional marijuana module that asked respondents who had reported past 30-day use to provide information on their routes of marijuana use.

The Impact Foundation LA’s CV Youth Ambassador Program serves as an example of what can happen when young people are trusted and given the proper tools to lead.

Two alarming studies were released recently that highlight the association between cannabis use and serious health concerns.