Communities That Care

Eagle County: Where Youth Thrive!

Communities That Care is a process that was developed to respond to the need to have communities build capacity to celebrate the strengths and meet the needs of their youth. The headquarters is located at the University of Washington. Communities that follow the process have shown to significantly reduce risk factors for their youth and bolster protective factors. Quickly defined, risk factors are those elements that exist in life that can provide the potential possibility that a youth will make choices that can have a negative impact on healthy development. Protective factors are those elements that support the healthy development for youth.

The Communities That Care process occurs in 5 phases.

Communities That Care in Eagle County has moved through Phases 1 through 4. Through Phase 3, specific environmental strategies were selected in order to respond to data that revealed risk factors and protective factors in Eagle County.

The identified risk factors are:

Perception of the Availability of Substances (for all ages)
Community Laws and Norms which are favorable towards Substance Abuse
Favorable Youth attitudes towards Substance use

The identified protective factors are:

Opportunities and Rewards for Prosocial Involvement

in the community
at school
at home

At the end of Phase 4, specific outcomes for each strategy were determined and sub-goals were crafted.

These are:

Strategy: Leverage Statewide Mass Media Campaigns to Change Community and Social Norms where the objective is: By 2022, the State’s mass media campaign will be saturated throughout our local community. There will be increased knowledge and perception of harm and access to substance abuse and mental health resources, thereby decreasing overall youth substance use in our community for generations to
Strategy: Build Public Support for Conventional Enforcement of Existing Laws where the outcome is: By 2021, research that includes both regulations and consequences, regarding policies and existing laws for alcohol will be completed and a summary of the research will be publicized to Eagle County residents and travelers.
Recruit and Reward Youth Participation in Community Coalitions where the objective is: By September of 2021, we will see an increase in the number of youth serving in shared leadership and decision-making roles within our community.

For additional resources, information can be accessed at:

General Communities That Care information: https://www.communitiesthatcare.net/

Communities That Care in Eagle County: (note: site is being rebuilt) eaglecountycommunitiesthatcare.org