Who is Drug Free Cherokee?

Drug Free Cherokee is a community coalition of partners working together to prevent drug use and misuse among the youth in Cherokee County. Drug Free Cherokee is not a program or organization, it is a collaboration of agencies, organizations and individuals who each bring their perspective, knowledge and expertise to the table. Drug use prevention cannot succeed through one program or organization alone. It takes parents, youth, educators, law enforcement, youth-serving organizations, healthcare professionals, civic organizations and volunteers, the faith community, the media, the business community, local and state agencies with expertise in the field of substance use and others involved in reducing substance use. We are all impacted in some way by illegal drug use, weather it is use by someone in our family, a friend, a co-worker, an employee, a young person in our church or school, it has effected our community and those we care about. In bringing people to the table around this issue as Drug Free Cherokee, this group is organized to address the entire community environment in which young people might use alcohol, tobacco and other substances harmful to their health and well-being.

What does Drug Free Cherokee do?

The focus of Drug Free Cherokee is prevention of underage alcohol and drug use, and misuse of prescription drugs among Cherokee County youth. In order to obtain positive outcomes, the coalition takes a “comprehensive” look at the entire community environment and sets goals and objectives to achieve population-level changes.

The work of Drug Free Cherokee is done using the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), Strategic Prevention Framework shown on the right. Starting with the assessment process, data is collected to define the local problems and resources in our community to address needs and gaps. The coalition continues to build capacity bringing stakeholders in to the process. A comprehensive strategic plan is done for year fiscal year that includes policies, programs, and practices creating a logical, data-driven plan to address the problems identified in our assessment. Our implementation phase looks to include programs, policies and practices that are identified as evidence-based. Evaluation is done to look at the data and outcomes to measure our outcomes and identify strengths and weakness in our approaches moving forward. It is our goal to do all possible to prevention any harm to any of our youth as a result of drugs and alcohol.

The Drug Free Cherokee Coalition

Meetings are held from 10:00am - 11:00am the first Friday of each month
(Except January, July and December)
At
First Baptist Church of Holly Springs in the Fellowship Hall
2632 Holly Springs Pkwy, Holly Springs, GA 30115

For more information, contact Anna Polson at Anna@CherokeeFOCUS.org