Please support the work of the Middletown Prevention Coalition (MPC)! We welcome your contribution as an investment in the health and wellness of our youth!
Your donation will go to programs and initiatives that will directly impact the mental health and well-being of our Middletown youth.
Donate
Donate to the Middletown Prevention Coalition online.
Vision
To create a safe, healthy, and drug-free Middletown.
Mission
To mobilize and empower the Middletown community through action, education, support, and collaboration to reduce risky behaviors and motivate youth and adults to safe and healthy lifestyles.
MPC Goals
To decrease youth substance use and reduce access to substances while promoting health and wellness in the community and enhancing healthy choices.
To build the capacity of the coalition and the community to reduce youth substance use and create a safe, healthy, and drug-free Middletown where our youth can thrive and achieve their greatest potential.
Definition of "Prevention"
The role of prevention is to create healthy communities in which people have a "quality of life" such as healthy environments at work and at school; supportive communities and neighborhoods; connections with family/friends and drug and crime-free communities.
Prevention focusing on risk and protective factors is based on a simple premise: to prevent a problem, we need to identify factors that increase the risk of the problem developing. We then need to find ways that enhance protective or resiliency factors.
- Risk and Protective Factors, Dr. Hawkins and Catalano, University of Washington
Risk Factors & Protective Factors
Risk factors and protective factors are the conditions in the community, family, school, and individual's environments that are known to increase or decrease the likelihood that a young person will engage in one or more problem behaviors, such as substance abuse, bullying, or dropping out of school.
Why do we look at these? The more risk factors youth face, the more likely the child is to have problems as an adult. Enhancing protective factors minimizes the problem behaviors. The MPC looks at our community through this lens so we can select activities, strategies, and programs individualized to our Middletown needs.
MPC Membership
The MPC is a community-based organization comprised of individuals representing various public and private sectors of the Middletown community. These sectors include:
- Business
- Civic or volunteer organizations
- Health care
- Law enforcement
- Media
- Organizations involved in reducing substance abuse
- Parents
- Religious or fraternal organizations
- School
- State, local governmental agency
- Youth
- Youth-serving organizations
- Other interested citizens
The "best practices" literature for community change states that all major sectors of a community need to be around the table in order to impact the norms around substance use and create true community change. Are you interested in creating a Middletown where our youth can thrive? Email MPC.
