Our Approach Here in Fayette County

The Needs Assessment shown in Step 1 to the right took almost a full year (2012)! We gathered data from Fayette County education, health care, law enforcement, retail alcohol density, Department of Juvenile Justice, Georgia Student Health Survey data for our county, and more.   You will see more of that on the next page, “What we found (the Data)”.

In Step 2, we conducted a Capacity Assessment of what other “boots were on the ground”: what other organizations already had efforts related to youth substance abuse prevention. We did this to avoid redundant efforts, and to identify possible areas of collaboration, e.g. most notably with the Fayette County School System. We also started developing deeper conversations with community leaders on this subject, and many of these community leaders became “community champions” who pushed this effort much further than we could have done alone. You can read more about these champions on the “Our Strategies, Successes and Community Leaders”