REDONDO BEACH, Calif. (Sept. 19, 2024) – The Beach Cities Partnership for Youth Coalition has been selected as a recipient of a $625,000 federal grant from the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) under the Drug-Free Communities (DFC) Support Program. This grant program, managed by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), represents an opportunity to strengthen ongoing efforts in preventing youth substance use in our community.
Beginning in federal fiscal year 2024, $125,000 annually will be available to support substance use prevention programming in the Beach Cities. This new funding will support the coalition’s work until 2029. The Beach Cities Partnership for Youth Coalition received its first DFC grant in 2019, which was also for $625,000 over five years.
ONDCP’s DFC program is the nation’s leading effort to mobilize communities to prevent and reduce substance use among youth. The DFC program provides federal grants to community coalitions to identify and respond to the issues unique to their community and change community conditions tied to youth substance use. With this grant, the Beach Cities Partnership for Youth coalition will be able to continue building a safe, healthy, and drug-free community.
“Preventing substance use today is critical, so that today’s youth don’t become tomorrow’s overdose victims. We are thrilled to award this grant because we know the outcomes DFC funded coalitions are capable of achieving when implementing evidence-based prevention strategies at the local level.” said Helen Hernandez, Administrator of the DFC Program at ONDCP.
“Through the DFC program, CDC is empowering community coalitions to implement local solutions to unique, local conditions, with the common goal of preventing youth substance use,” added Allison Arwady, MD, MPH, director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control at CDC.
“Since we identified youth substance use as a health priority, more than 200 partners have joined us in the Beach Cities Partnership for Youth Coalition, helping put the infrastructure in place to take on some of the health challenges facing our community,” said BCHD CEO Tom Bakaly. “The numbers show what we’re doing is working, and with the support of ONDCP and the CDC, we can continue these efforts in collaboration with our partners, using a community approach to reduce youth substance use and help students grow into healthy adults.”
The Beach Cities Partnership for Youth Coalition serves the Beach Cities of Hermosa Beach, Manhattan Beach and Redondo Beach, a community of 125,294 people.
Since receiving the initial DFC grant, substance use among young people has fallen, with the percentage of Beach Cities 11th graders who reported using alcohol or other drugs plummeting from 35% in 2019 to 17% in 2024, according to the California Healthy Kids Survey (CHKS). The CHKS also reports marijuana use among Beach Cities 11th graders dropped from 23% in 2019 to 5% in 2024.
The Beach Cities Partnership for Youth Coalition joins more than 750 community coalitions across the U.S. working to increase community-wide collaboration and decrease youth substance use. Recognizing that local problems need local solutions, DFC-funded groups engage multiple sectors of the community and employ a variety of strategies to address local substance use problems. Among the grantees, the Beach Cities Partnership for Youth Coalition is one of 23 recipients from California.
In 2016, Beach Cities Health District (BCHD) identified substance use prevention and mental health as top health priorities for the Beach Cities youth population to address higher levels of substance use, suicidal ideation and anxiety than their statewide peers. BCHD serves as the lead agency for the Coalition and will continue to administer the DFC grant in the Beach Cities.
Related links:
- Beach Cities Partnership for Youth Coalition: https://www.bchd.org/partnership
- Beach Cities Health District: https://www.bchd.org
- White House Office of National Drug Control Policy: https://www.whitehouse.gov/ondcp/briefing-room/2024/09/04/as-students-go-back-to-school-white-house-announces-nearly-94-million-for-local-community-coalitions-to-help-prevent-youth-substance-use-and-address-the-overdose-epidemic/
- Drug-Free Communities New Grant Award Recipients: https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/FY-2024-DFC-Web-Spreadsheet-New.pdf
- U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention: https://www.cdc.gov/
Media Contact: Dan Smith, Beach Cities Health District, (310) 374-3426, ext. 8156 or dan.smith@bchd.org
