NASHUA – The City of Nashua Division of Public Health and Community Services, Greater Nashua Public Health Network has been awarded a grant in the amount of $22,000 to support substance misuse prevention strategies within the Greater Nashua Public Health Region. This grant was made possible by gifts from the following fund(s): New Hampshire Tomorrow Substance Use Disorders Fund, Oliver J. and Dorothy Penniman Hubbard New Futures Fund. The grant period began July 01, 2021 and ends June 30, 2022.

Creating a resilient community is a priority of substance misuse prevention work, and has been a focus of the Greater Nashua Public Health Network for years. The COVID-19 pandemic has solidified the need for this work as it highlighted systemic issues including substance misuse, mental health, healthcare, and justice systems. Throughout the next year, the Greater Nashua Public Health Network will use this funding to assess the impact of substance misuse prevention efforts over the past 10 years and identify community needs to improve strategies for supporting the resilience of our community, especially during the pandemic. This work will be conducted through multiple listening sessions and surveys within the Greater Nashua Region.

“The work that was accomplished with the support of the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation for the past decade has been invaluable to our State as a whole, but especially in the Greater Nashua Region.” said Lisa Vasquez, Behavioral Health Strategist at the City of Nashua Division of Public Health and Community Services. “We were able to support or start projects such as the Youth PhotoVoice Project, working with regional schools for Red Ribbon Week, support local coalitions in their initiatives and educating the community through community forums, and many other projects and initiatives. In the Greater Nashua Region, we have seen a decline in youth substance use as seen in the Youth Risk Behavioral Survey (YRBS). In 2015, 96.5% of high-school aged youth had never used heroin and in 2019 98.7% of high school aged youth had never tried heroin in their lifetime.”

Further information about this project’s initiatives, including the listening sessions and surveys, will be available on our website at www.NashuaNH.gov/DPHCS as it is available.

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