Community Prevention & Wellness Initiative

A Statewide Initiative

The Community Prevention and Wellness Initiative (CPWI) is led by the Division of Behavioral Health and Recovery at the Washington State Health Care Authority.

CPWI’s goal is to keep communitywide rates of substance abuse from boiling over into a crisis. It funds and empowers local Coalitions to adopt substance abuse prevention services, programs and strategies that prevent high school dropout, juvenile delinquency and the development of mental health disorders.

Through partnerships with counties, non-profit organizations and school districts across Washington, as well as the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction, and Educational Service Districts, CPWI is implemented in:

More than 100 communities
In all 39 counties
Across all nine Educational Service Districts

At its core, CPWI is a community and school-based model for delivering prevention programs and strategies to reduce underage misuse and abuse of alcohol, marijuana, opioids, tobacco, and other drugs. This model uses a data-informed, community-level decision making process to determine root social and emotional causes that predict problem behaviors.

The CPWI model also allows us to better target and leverage limited public resources, increasing our ability to gain the best possible outcomes for Monroe.

Prevention Works

Over 60 prevention programs and policies have been shown through rigorous research and evaluation to prevent substance use problems.

An evaluation by Washington State University shows that CPWI is meeting its goals: 95% of programs implemented in CPWI communities had positive results in delaying the first use of alcohol or other drugs, reducing overall substance use, and decreased predictive risk factors while increasing protective factors. Between 2011 and 2016, the most recently evaluated period, CPWI communities showed improvements in all family and community risk factors. Statewide evaluation results also showed significant decreases in 10th grade substance use outcomes:

Alcohol use and binge drinking – down 42%
Cigarette use – down 49%
Marijuana use – down 11%

We Need You at the Table!

Our Coalition depends on people just like you. We are your friends, neighbors and colleagues working together on an issue too big for any one person or agency to address on their own.

Although we're making great progress, we still have a lot of work to do to keep our kids healthy. We meet monthly and have a place at the table for you!