Our Focus

This coalition is a group of community members that have been impacted by or are concerned about substance use or mental health and want to improve our community’s quality of life. The coalition members work together on strategies to help prevent young people from ever trying or misusing drugs. It also works to create a community that helps support people who do have a substance use disorder or suffer from mental illness in staying safe, getting treatment, and maintaining their recovery.

Mission

Create a safe and healthy environment for youth with reduced access to substances and increased positive connections.

Vision

Healthy Choices, Better Lives

Values

Educate, Collaborate, Inclusion, and Partnership

Our Impact

  • Developed first social host ordinance in the state of WI to prevent underage drinking.
  • Self-reported underage binge drinking decreased from 26.4% in 2009 to 10% in 2021.
  • National Prevention Week. In 2022 we provided $12,000 of funds to 8 schools and local non-profits to conduct activities to address youth mental health and substance use. Funds were made possible by the Manitowoc County Prevention Grant.
  • Festival Toolkits. To help mitigate underage drinking HMC SUP now has 9 festivals that consistently use the our Festival Toolkit and in 2022 prevented 50 youth from assessing alcohol at community events.
  • Distributed lock boxes, medication deactivation kits, other drug resources. To reduce access to prescription drugs, 465 deactivation kits were distributed to pharmacies and other community organizations. We also provided 10 lock bags, 165 drug disposal location magnets, and 150 lock boxes to a local inpatient/outpatient treatment center in 2022

Get Involved

If the Substance Use Prevention Coalition sounds like something you or your organization is interested in joining, please send HMC a message or contact:

Brittany Boyer
brittanyb@newahec.org