Prevention Partner Headquarters

COMMUNITY

Community Prevention Partners follow these strategies:

Promote Healthy Behaviors in Your Community

Physical Activity

Provide training to community leaders to enable the creation of action plans that promote physical activity.
Establish or adopt standards for "Active Communities" and develop a program for certifying communities that meet the standards.
Work with non-traditional partners to promote active communities ?including pollution control experts, planners, environmental groups, hobbyists, faith-based communities, social and cultural organizations.
Develop physical activity awareness campaigns, which include helping people take advantage of existing community programs and services.
Seek and secure funding and resources for maintaining open facilities on evenings, weekends and holidays.
Work through civic associations and neighborhood organizations to develop and encourage neighborhood-based physical activity programs for all ages, including fun family activities and events.

Nutrition

Provide education and awareness in regards to the "Food Guide Pyramid" by having qualified speakers to address specific community nutrition issues and providing mentors to assist in follow-up.
Increase access to high quality and low cost nutritious foods in lower economic areas by advocating for more supermarkets.
Work with local merchants and farmers?markets to improve healthy food selection and merchandising.
Engage residents in community gardening programs and teach youth to garden healthy foods.

Tobacco Use

Advocate and encourage insurers and employers to cover evidence-based treatment for nicotine dependency.
Advocate for the development and enforcement of smoke-free laws including, but not limited to, restaurants and school grounds.
Support a continuous, well-funded, and comprehensive tobacco control program.
Expand youth-led and youth involvement tobacco prevention programs to all areas of the state.

Alcohol and Drug Use

De-glamorize alcohol and drug use through community based and counter-marketing campaigns.
Sponsor parental and adolescent peer education programs, using effective curricula.

Advocate for enforcement of existing mandates for youth and parent counseling following convictions of crimes related to alcohol or substance abuse.

Responsible Sexual Behavior

Encourage parent-child communication about responsible sexual behavior.
Provide peer-led community outreach and group education programs for adolescents and children.
Develop campaigns featuring youth and adult role models and which promote responsible decision-making.
Provide more "safe havens," community centers, and after school and weekend activities for adolescents and children.

Promote Healthy Communities

Environmental Quality

Educate residents on local recycling programs and the social responsibility to recycle and reuse.
Advocate for the implementation, improvement, and enforcement of housing codes.
Increase the number of environmental educational programs offered by communities and work with schools, governments, and other agencies to implement environmental curricula.
Evaluate effective ways to design ordinances for more environmentally friendly communities.
Encourage home renovation businesses and homeowners to learn and use safe lead hazard reduction techniques.

Violence

Create and develop violence prevention education programs and resource materials to provide education on prevention, early intervention and treatment of child abuse, family violence, and sexual assault in families or intimate relationships.
Link with business and government to promote and ensure adequate, culturally competent resources to help people learn to recognize violent behaviors and manage them through non-violent alternatives.
Provide universally available, voluntary home visitation services for parents.
Educate community to recognize and refer victims of child abuse, family violence, and sexual assault.

Education

Share resources with schools and create and develop partnerships with schools to develop more after school programs.
Collaborate with schools to develop strategies to keep children in school and help drop outs get back to school.
Educate parents on how they can effectively communicate with school faculty and teachers.
Work with schools and parent groups to develop local and culturally specific strategies and programs to address social and environmental factors that contribute to minority drop out rates.

Prevent and Reduce Diseases and Disorders

Mental Health

Educate the public to reduce the stigma of mental disorders through community education programs and local media campaigns.
Promote use of available community mental health resources.
Advocate for physically and emotionally healthy, drug-free work environments that provide health insurance including parity for mental health and substance abuse treatment services.

Injury and Disability

Identify "hot spots" for potential injuries and report to State of Delaware Helpline.
Develop community based plans to solve identified injury problems. Provide educational material and programs and utilize the media to educate the community on how to prevent injury and disability.

Preventive Services Use

Provide training on subjects such as cultural sensitivity and health literacy, for community based organizations and their members and volunteers.

Identify key members of community to do education and marketing of preventive services.

Reach out to special populations through non-traditional channels, including faith communities, farm organizations, and social and cultural organizations.
Advocate for expansion of school-based health centers and high school services to include pregnancy prevention counseling and contraceptive services.

Infant Health

Provide culturally sensitive education to families on maternal and infant health (e.g., safety, car seats, tooth decay, SIDS, healthy lifestyles, immunizations).

Improve Health Systems

Access to Health Care Services

Create partnerships or build on existing ones to seek grants and explore other alternative funding mechanisms to support activities to improve the health care delivery system infrastructure, including increasing the number of providers serving vulnerable or underserved populations.
Participate in committees established to explore the role of transportation in improving access to health care services.
Promote the services of health centers established specifically for low-income, uninsured, underinsured and/or minority populations (e.g., La Red, MATCH van, work site clinics, and Federally Qualified Health Centers).
Increase cultural competence of health care providers, employers, and others through awareness and education strategies. These could include participation in the development and use of report cards, patient and client satisfaction surveys, stakeholder focus groups, and surveys.