Communities That Care

Communities That Care (CTC) is a coalition-based prevention system that engages community members to set priorities based on community challenges and strengths for the development of healthy futures for youth.

CTC is a program of the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention and was also selected by the U.S. Justice Department.

Communities That Care (CTC) is a coalition-based prevention operating system that uses a public health approach to prevent youth problem behaviors by empowering communities to gather at the grass-roots level in order to both enhance positive youth development and reduce risk factors.

CTC provides a structure for engaging community stakeholders, a process for establishing a shared community vision, tools for assessing levels of risk and protection in communities, and processes for prioritizing risk and protective factors and setting specific, measureable community goals.

Collaborative. CTC uses a coalition approach to address issues at the community level. The coalition will include a diverse group of stakeholders concerned with youth development (youth-serving agency staff, school representatives, health professionals, city leaders, law enforcement, United Way, other funding entities, neighborhood groups, business people, parents, media representatives, faith community members, youth, etc.) in applying prevention science principles to decisions affecting the community’s youth.

CTC engages all community members who have a stake in healthy futures for young people and sets priorities for action based on community challenges and strengths.

Proactive. Rather than reacting to problems once they have already occurred, CTC focuses on strengthening protections and decreasing risks in order to promote healthy youth development and decrease the likelihood of problem behaviors.

Science based. CTC is grounded in rigorous research from a variety of disciplines, including public health, sociology, psychology, criminology, and community psychology. This research has identified the predictors of youth problem behaviors, developed epidemiologic assessment tools for measuring those predictors in a community, and tested programs that work in addressing those predictors.

Data driven. The CTC system ensures local control of decisions based on local data and needs assessments, and flexibility to implement actions specific to the priorities identified by community members.

CTC’s theory of change hypothesizes that it takes from 2 to 5 years to observe community-level effects on risk factors, and 5 or more years to observe effects on adolescent delinquency or substance use.

CTC has clear, measurable outcomes are tracked over time to show progress and ensure accountability.