July Coalition meeting at Cotton Patch Cafe

The July meeting of the East Texas Substance Abuse Coalition will be held on Tuesday, July 22nd at Cotton Patch Cafe in Tyler, located directly across the loop from Robert E. Lee High School. We will meet from 11:30 until 1:00 in the meeting room.

I plan to share some of what I learned about Coalitions at BHI earlier this week.

To see the menu, click on the logo below:

See you Tuesday!

BHI in Austin

James McCraw and David are in Austin at BHI this week. They will bring whatever they learn back to share.

Here's my sign. BHI, Austin, TX

Annual Rusk County School Supply Fair to be Held 8/22

East Texas Substance Abuse Coalition 2015 Needs Assessment

A couple of weeks back, we completed and submitted our FY2015 community needs assessment to DSHS. It is the foundational document for the work we will do over the five counties ETSAC covers; from it we will develop our strategic plan, and will go on to hopefully make a positive impact in our community.

For the sake of manageability, most of the work I do focuses on Tyler/Smith County, but I am fortunate to work with and through other great coalitions in other parts of my coverage area, like Wise Up Rusk County, and Jacksonville's Citizens' Police Academy. Here in Smith County, I get to work through/attend the Human Needs Network, Pay Attention East Texas, TISD's SHAC, and Smith County CRCG. All that is to say that there are a lot of people doing many different kinds of good work all over East Texas.

If I can become effective in connecting people who care about youth substance abuse here, I will then move to work more directly in Van Zandt, Rusk, Cherokee and Henderson Counties--I'd probably focus on whichever county demonstrates the most addressable need, first. So, I will be working to gather and process good data for all of the other communities that I get to serve in, but will likely publish focused Needs Assessments for those communities as I make that shift. If the data you are interested in is not here in this Assessment, let me know, and stay tuned for future updates.