An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.
Teresa Walters of Regional Prevention Center of the Flint Hills has a mission — to prevent substance abuse in youth. The Regional Prevention Center of the Flint Hills is a program of the Mental Health Center of East Central Kansas.
Walters’ expertise in the prevention field has paid off. She has been appointed to the board of the Kansas Family Partnership Inc. (KFP), a state-wide non-profit agency that has been providing research-based drug and alcohol prevention resources and training opportunities for individuals, organizations and policy-makers throughout Kansas for the past 10 years.
“I felt very honored,” Walters said. “Just the qualities of the other board members. I feel very honored that they needed my input. I am honored to be able to have an even more active role with KFP through service as a board member.”
The KFP also provides support to community coalitions all across Kansas on substance abuse issues. They sponsor programs like the Red Ribbon Week and SADD.
“They have all these resources available to communities,” Walters said of the benefit of KFP. “A lot of these community coalitions have shoe-string budgets. Everything they focus on is mainly statewide. They get the message out about drinking and substance abuse.”
According to the RPCHF’s brochure, Walters works at one of 13 RPCHFs across the state that are research-based prevention services that reduce the risks and increase protective factors in Kansas families and communities with the goal of working to build a strong foundation of community support for the reduction of youth problem behaviors.
The mental health-based RPCHF covers six counties: Coffey, Osage, Lyon, Morris, Chase and Marion.
Walters said her job is to make sure communities that have community coalitions are doing prevention right.
“We call it prevention science,” Walters said. “It’s more than just sticking a red ribbon on a kid once a year and saying ‘Just say no.’ You have to look at a lot of factors.”
Knowing those factors is another place where Walters comes in. She identifies risk factors and helps community groups such as schools, parents, youth group leaders, businesses and community and civic organizations focus on those factors.
She also helps make sure communities are proficient in specific grants such as the Drug-Free Community grant. This grant, which four of the six counties RPCHF covers receives funding from, mandates that the coalitions have to collaborate on 12 sectors including law enforcement, schools, parents and youth.
“We look at those programs and see if they are efficient,” Walters said. “We also help them seek funding (for those programs).”
Walters said there is a great benefit to the community in having a prevention coalition.
“Those communities that have coalitions have an advantage,” Walters said. “It’s typically a community coalition that drives community efforts. We need to move away from that mentality that ‘kids will be kids.’”
Walters said she enjoys her job and it comes naturally to her.
“Prevention just seems as a “no-brainer” to me,” Walters said in a letter to KFP. “I strive to make policy makers and others realize how our communities and our entire state can be healthier in so many ways if we would only adopt a mindset to prevent problems related to substance use/abuse, rather than always waiting to react to them.”
Besides prevention, a lot can be learned from treatment of substance abuse from the people who are going through treatment, Walters said.
“They can teach us,” she said. “It’s good to hear how they interpret the messages that we think are so wonderful.”