Partners Training Academy – Keynote on Substance Use

Posted on June 28, 2019

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Identifying Adolescent Substance Use Trends & Using Data to Strengthen Community Collaboration

This presentation and information packet was developed by the Center for Housing and Community Studies (CHCS) in response to a request by Partners Behavioral Health Management. The project involved compiling, analyzing, and mapping local, state, and national data sources including: American Community Survey, data on justice involved populations, CDC Youth Risk Behavior Survey, the Monitoring the Future Survey, the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, the Episode Data Set (TEDS) and other data sources to create community-level profiles for each of the counties in the Partners Behavioral Health Management catchment area. A symposium presentation on the relationship between Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), Social Determinants of Health (SDOH), Behavioral Health Disparities (BHD), and the use of substances among adolescents in Rutherford, Burke, Catawba, Cleveland, Gaston, Iredell, Lincoln, Surry, and Yadkin Counties was developed.

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Presenters

Stephen J. Sills (PhD, Arizona State University, 2004) is Professor of Sociology and Director of The Center for Housing and Community Studies. For the last thirteen years, Dr. Stephen Sills, has conducted housing and community research in North Carolina. Before coming to UNCG he worked in Seattle, Phoenix, Detroit, and abroad in Taiwan and the Philippines. Dr. Sills has published research on immigration, poverty, immigrant access to health and social services, and social support networks for marginalized people including peer-reviewed articles on: Predictors of Drug Norms and Drug Use Among Pre-adolescents, Ecological Perspective on Latino/a Drug Use, Innovations in Survey Research, Methodological Issues of Mixed-Sex Focus Groups, and Culturally-specific Intervention Methods. Dr. Sills has also worked at the municipal, county, and regional level to address fair housing issues, gentrification, affordable housing, and community planning with the Piedmont Triad Regional Council, the Rocky Mount Revitalization Initiative, the City of Asheville, the City of Greensboro, the City of High Point, the City of Winston-Salem, and others. He often speaks on the use of data analytics and visualization in addressing contemporary social issues.

Rachel Ryding is a Doctoral student in Sociology at the University of Delaware, and graduated summa cum laude from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG) in 2016 with a Bachelor’s degree in Sociology and a concentration in Criminology.  While focusing her studies in the areas of research methodologies and health, her primary research interests specialize on stigma and health disparities pertaining to mental health and substance use disorders. Rachel has been a graduate researcher with the Center for Drug and Health Studies at the University of Delaware since 2017, where she works as an analyst with the Delaware School Surveys and the CDC Youth Risk Behavior Surveys. She has been affiliated with the Center for Housing and Community Studies at UNCG since 2015, where she has worked with projects across the state of North Carolina on topics including from housing, quality of life, substance use, and community health. Rachel has co-authored journal articles and reports, as well as facilitated presentations to community-based and professional audiences, on the following subjects: stigma reduction in collegiate recovery and the implementation of ally-training programs; the relationship between economic decline, housing, and substance use in southern Appalachia; Asset-Based Community Development and asset mapping as tools for community empowerment; the social construction and medicalization of drug epidemics; rurality and behavioral health disparities; and the relationship between childhood trauma and substance use among high school students.

 

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