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Communities that Care to release report about well being of Moffat County Youth

CRAIG — Communities that Care is building the village — a connected group of people — to provide youth in Moffat County the support they need to succeed by strengthening and supplementing existing work to help reduce alcohol and substance use, violence, crime and other problematic behaviors.

“Our teens are dealing with the society in which they are growing up. They are dealing with things that we didn’t have to deal with. The goal of this program is to look at the gaps and problems and help our teens,” said Communities that Care Facilitator Amanda Ott.

Ott was invited to present findings of a 2017 CTC survey of Moffat County high-school and middle-school students, as well other data sources, to the Moffat County Board of County Commissioners at its meeting Tuesday.

The survey measured student response to a series of questions focused on problem behaviors, such as substance abuse, depression/ anxiety, school dropout rate, teen pregnancy, delinquency and violence.

A report is expected to be released in this month, but in advance of the release, Ott shared some of the successes and challenges faced by area youth.

“Moffat County students have a higher than the national average for depression, anxiety, substance abuse and lack of commitment to school, which the CTC Community Board have chosen as risk factors of focus for the next phase of work,” Ott said.

These results were consistent with results from youth across the Yampa Valley.

The next step in the process is to begin assessing resources, including programs, policies and strategies, that exist in Moffat County.

“A workgroup of citizens will collect the information, then assess it for gaps and then report back to the community board to move onto the next phase of the process,” Ott said.

Programs using the CTC model in other communities have delivered impressive results.

“Young people from CTC communities were 25 percent to 33 percent less likely to have health and behavior problems than those from control communities,” according to the 
University of Washington Center for Communities that Care.

The program is administered by Northwest Colorado Health in Craig and funded through the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment using marijuana tax education fund dollars.

Contact Sasha Nelson at 970-875-1794 or snelson@CraigDailyPress.com.


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