Conference Agenda

Today’s gambling culture is showing up in more youth environments than ever - from sports betting and gaming features to social media and everyday risk-taking. In this interactive workshop, participants will examine warning signs, protective factors, the concept of the house edge, and how to strengthen youth decision-making. Participants will leave with practical prevention strategies, helpful training resources, and fresh ideas for meaningful conversations with youth and families.

Presenter: Pam Pietruszewski 

This presentation will present an organized way of thinking about building health-promoting relationships that support prevention of mental and behavioral health risks and promote flourishing in youth. The science behind connection and relationships will be examined along with four intentional strategies that comprise a “way of being” with youth. A belief system comprised of five core beliefs trusted adults can cultivate within youth will be described. Several opportunities will be provided for self-reflection and enhancement of one’s ability to engage the “way of being” with youth.

Presenter: Kate Drayton

Youth mental health challenges continue to rise, yet prevention often begins only after a crisis occurs. Research consistently demonstrates that a single trusted adult can serve as a powerful protective factor in a young person's life, reducing risk factors associated with depression, anxiety, suicide, substance misuse, and other adverse outcomes. This interactive workshop explores how school personnel, prevention professionals, healthcare providers, and community organizations can intentionally create cultures of belonging, connection, and support that strengthen youth resilience. Through storytelling, reflection, case examples, and practical strategies, participants will examine the role they play in fostering protective relationships and promoting mental well-being before intervention becomes necessary.

Presenter: Gloria E. Barrera

Alcohol is the most used substance by youth in Illinois and across the country. Dangerous products are being introduced and marketed to youth at an alarming rate. This workshop will discuss the latest alcoholic beverages and the marketing techniques the industry is using to capture an underage audience. In addition to the products, this workshop will review policy solutions and how creative partnerships can be successful.

Presenters: Jody Heavilin and Kenneth Williams

Mental health challenges are shaped not only by individual experiences but also by the quality of our connections to family, community, culture, and systems of support. For many Hispanic/Latino individuals and families, experiences such as adverse childhood experiences (ACEs), migration stress, discrimination, social isolation, and other social determinants of health can disrupt belonging and increase vulnerability to behavioral health challenges. At the same time, research shows that social connection and belonging are among the strongest protective factors for mental health, resilience, and well-being (Allen et al., 2021; Holt-Lunstad, 2022). This workshop introduces Belonging as Prevention, a strengths-based framework that reimagines mental health promotion through connection, cultural affirmation, and community engagement.

Presenter: Cristina Castillo

This workshop is designed to empower Peer Support Specialists and Peer Supervisors to fully recognize, articulate, and embody their value within behavioral health and Substance Use Disorder (SUD) systems, as well as the broader community. Too often, peer roles in both mental health and SUD spaces are misunderstood, minimized, or overshadowed by traditional clinical hierarchies, despite being rooted in the very experiences these systems are built to address. This training directly challenges that dynamic, reinforcing that peers are not “adjunct support,” but essential providers whose lived experience brings credibility, connection, and real-world insight that cannot be taught in a classroom. Special attention is given to the role of Peer Supervisors in modeling, protecting, and elevating peer identity, while fostering environments where peers are respected, heard, and empowered to engage confidently across all levels of staff and community settings.

Presenter: JJ Magliocco, CRSS/CPRS

Building on his keynote, Stephen will spotlight restorative practices he has witnessed schools, treatment centers, and criminal justice systems use effectively to address substance use disorder and behavioral issues. Weaving in his own story and lived experience, Stephen will revisit crucial moments from his youth to show where things went wrong and how restorative approaches could have altered the outcome. By contrasting these experiences with strictly punitive responses and the harsh realities of the classroom- to-prison pipeline, he will highlight both the cost of missed opportunities and the potential for second chances. Stephen will also share details from specific incidents that illustrate the real challenges young people face, as well as the difficult role adults play in responding to youth who violate a law or code of conduct.

Presenter: Stephen Hill

In the world of substance misuse prevention, we often hear about what does work—research-backed strategies that make a real impact. But what about the methods that don't work? Surprisingly, many communities continue to use outdated, ineffective, or even harmful prevention practices despite decades of research showing they fail to deliver. This presentation will explore the common yet misguided approaches still in use, shedding light on why they don’t work and the unintended consequences they can create.

Presenter: Erin Ficker

Despite the recent decrease in opioid overdose deaths in the nation and the state of Illinois, the predominance of life loss remains in the middle aged black community. Over 70% of last year's overdose deaths were in this group. Interventions have been mostly unsuccessful in lowering this percentage of deaths Despite naloxone distribution, cultural care focus training and other group specific techniques. Overdose Prevention Sites (OPS), a safe place for participants to consume their purchased drugs with trained supervision has been used in over 30 countries and 200 sites, including 3 in the United States.

Presenters: Dr. Tanya R. Sorrell and Melissa Hernandez

During a time of unprecedented disruption and trauma, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) has identified mental health and substance use as a top priority. With the goal of advancing health equity, the district is being intentional about collaboration and accountability between central office departments, schools, caregivers, and other stakeholders. Chicago Public School’s Office of Student Health and Wellness (OSHW) offers guidance and content expertise on the district’s Comprehensive Student Substance Use Prevention and Intervention and Mental Health and Suicide Prevention policies. Through these policies and cross-departmental collaboration, CPS is transforming student mental health and substance use via multi-tiered systems of support; providing district-wide prevention education, and enhancing connections between staff, parents/caregivers, and community-based organizations.

Presenters: Caroline Roa and Lindsay Bridegum

In this presentation, The Prescription Playbook will share its most recent social media communications campaign developed for and by emerging adults (ages 18-25) to prevent opioid overdose deaths in the state of Illinois using harm reduction strategies. The campaign utilized local and state data as well as feedback from the identified population as its focal point. Participants will be encouraged to take part in a facilitated Socratic seminar discussion to cultivate ideas and knowledge, sharing creative strategies for harm reduction. Join The Prescription Playbook for a collective conversation, which is sure to leave you encouraged, reenergized, and inspired to carry on with the vital work of harm reduction in prevention!

Presenters: Marissa Thompson and Sarah Grunden

In this engaging workshop, prevention professionals will gain practical strategies for designing and facilitating impactful outreach tables for schools, community events, and public awareness initiatives. Participants will explore effective approaches to planning, implementation, audience engagement, and cost-conscious preparation using the SPF model, while learning how to create experiences that are both informative and interactive. The session will provide hands-on ideas, adaptable resources, and evidence-informed tools focused on key prevention topics, including Drug Take Back initiatives, Alcohol’s Impact on Brain Development, Stress Management/Healthy Coping Skills, and Vaping Prevention Education. Attendees will leave with knowledge of ready-to-use materials, creative engagement techniques, and actionable strategies to strengthen community outreach efforts and enhance prevention education across diverse audiences.

Presenters: Jordyn Hughes and Aleah Bautista

We can tell people a behavior is unhealthy a million different ways. But the problem is that most health communications stop at awareness: they explain the harm, raise the alarm, and assume behavior change follows. But it usually doesn't. Whether you work in prevention, treatment, recovery, mental health, schools, or community organizations, this session will give you a playbook for applying behavior change marketing principles in your work to move people from knowing to doing. We'll show you how to put these principles into practice by sharing case studies from Prevention First's prevention and hard reduction work with us at Rescue Agency.

Presenter: Holly Riker

What if one of the most effective tools across the Continuum of Care wasn’t a new program or curriculum, but something right outside your door? ROPIN (Recovery-Oriented Practices in Nature) is a framework for integrating nature intentionally into prevention, treatment, and recovery practice. This 60-minute interactive workshop makes the case — through experience, science, and application tips— that the natural environment is a meaningful, low-barrier amplifier of the clinical tools professionals are already using. Before a single research slide appears, participants will have an opportunity to experience the cognitive shift that nature can elicit: a quieting of directed attention and the loosening of mental noise.

Presenters: Evan Coulson and Emily Middleton

LGBTQ+ youth experience higher rates of substance use not because of identity, but because of chronic stress caused by stigma, rejection, and lack of belonging. This session connects the minority stress model with key developmental moments such as coming out, where stress often intensifies. Participants will explore how substance use can emerge as a coping response during these transitions and learn practical ways to respond in affirming, effective ways that reduce harm and increase safety.

Presenter: Chris Schaffner

Ready to take the next step in your prevention career? This interactive workshop provides an overview of the Certified Prevention Specialist (CPS) certification process, including the benefits of certification, key steps to begin the application process, and resources to support your success. Participants will also explore the certification exam and take part in a fun practice test activity. Whether certification is required in your organization or not, earning a CPS credential demonstrates professionalism, competency, and commitment to the prevention field and the communities you serve.

Presenters: Pamela Ziegler and Tyra Coleman

Navigating the complex landscape between early substance use intervention, treatment, and long-term recovery can be a daunting barrier for individuals in need. Traditional institutional models often struggle to establish the immediate trust required to help individuals take that critical first step toward wellness. This session highlights the critical role of deflection as a form of primary prevention, where the explicit goal is to intercept individuals early to prevent justice system involvement, crisis, or overdose. By leveraging adult peers with lived experience as essential navigators, deflection initiatives successfully bridge gaps within the continuum of care.

Presenters: Matt Doss, Program Manager, TASC Center for Health and Justice and Jeff McFadden, Peoria County ROSC Coordinator

Comprehensive Harm Reduction: More Than Narcan and Needles A One-Hour Educational Workshop Facilitated by P.D. Van Klaveren Lead Harm Reduction and Peer Support Specialist Comprehensive Harm Reduction: More Than Narcan and Needles is a one-hour educational workshop designed to challenge common misconceptions about substance use, homelessness, outreach work, and the realities of human survival in marginalized communities. Moving beyond the narrow public perception that harm reduction only consists of Narcan distribution or syringe access, this workshop presents harm reduction as a broad, human-centered philosophy of care rooted in dignity, survival, public health, trauma awareness, and compassionate engagement. Drawing from years of direct street outreach experience across Southern Illinois, P.D.

Presenter: P.D. Van Klaveren

For the first time, The ASAM Criteria offers standards built specifically for adolescents and transition-aged youth rather than adapted from adult guidelines. This introductory workshop gives clinicians, program leaders, and system partners a guided "sneak peek" into Volume 2. It will help ground participants in the science of addiction as a pediatric-onset illness and orienting them to the volume's overarching goal: improving the health and well-being of young people diagnosed with, or at risk of developing, a substance use disorder. Participants will leave understanding not only what changed in the Fourth Edition, but why it matters now.

Presenter: Josh Seezs

What can it look like when organizations stop working in silos and start building something together? This workshop introduces attendees to the Chicago Strategic Action Council (CSAC), a community-driven initiative to advance high-quality, culturally responsive, and equitable prevention efforts across Chicago. Through a hands-on overview of the collective impact model, a close look at the CSAC’s Theory of Change, and examples from the Council’s four workgroups, participants will gain a clear understanding of how cross-sector collaboration can drive systems-level change in prevention. The CSAC backbone organizers will share candid lessons learned along the way, as well as outcomes including collaborative tools and findings from a roundtable discussion among private foundations, public funders, and Chicago prevention providers.

Presenters: James Miletello and Claire Volkert

The Opioid Affected Youth Initiative (OAYI) works with jurisdictions across the country to adopt best practices to prevent youth substance use and justice involvement. Best practices center around identifying youth who are drug endangered through exposure to drug use by family members or caretakers or who may have encountered the justice system through charges based on status offenses or other low level crimes. This presentation will highlight prevention and intervention practices throughout the justice system starting with law enforcement led initiatives that identify at-risk youth for referral to community or educational based supportive services. It will also touch on referral and diversion services initiated by district attorney's offices through their victim services units and local prosecutors.

Presenter: Ben Ekelund 

There is no doubt that addiction is understood as a neurobiological illness where constant substance use and misuse alter the circuitry of the human brain. Neuroplasticity, the brain’s capacity to change and adapt to environmental changes, mediates our motivation to repeat pleasurable behaviors and reduce uncomfortable distressing physical or emotional states. Our addiction is a direct response to our brain. As addiction develops, the rewarding and reinforcing effect of the substance becomes less important, while craving associated with drug-related cues, the negative reinforcement of withdrawal states and negative affect begin to play a primary role in driving habitual use.

Presenter: Dr. Jeff Sim

Much has been said, written, posted, blogged, and broadcast about the struggles and supposed deprivations in rural America. To hear the media put it, over half of Americans inhabit cultural, economic, and environmental wastelands, devoid of hope and rife with despair. Rural youth, we’re told, have little in the way of prospects and even less in the way of hope. In this session, we will explore not only the challenges faced by rural communities, but also their unique strengths, capacities, and protective factors.

Presenter: Nigel Wrangham, CADC II, CPS

Research and real-world experience consistently demonstrate that children thrive when they are supported by strong, positive relationships both at home and within their communities. This workshop explores the critical connection between community organizations, family engagement, and youth development. Drawing from years of experience working with inner-city youth, participants will examine how a child's home environment directly impacts their ability to retain information, develop positive behaviors, and achieve academic success. While schools and community-based organizations provide valuable resources, mentorship, and intervention services, long-term success often depends on the reinforcement children receive within their home environment.

Presenter: Millicent Griffin M.ED

This workshop session will impart the Five P's of Community Building — Passion, Presence, Powerbase, Prestige, and Process — as applied to community-based organizations (CBOs) working in substance use primary prevention and related fields. Through interactive polling, group reflection, and real-world examples, participants will explore what it means to lead with purpose, show up consistently in the communities they serve, and build the relationships and resources necessary for sustainable impact. Special attention is given to how the Five P's align with SAMHSA's SPF to support data-driven, community-informed prevention efforts. Whether your organization is newly forming or well-established, this session offers practical strategies to strengthen every pillar — one at a time.

Presenter: Tracy T. Johnson

As gambling continues to expand across Illinois through mobile sports betting and video gaming terminals, exposure has become part of everyday life and contributes to a continuum of gambling-related harm that often goes unrecognized across youth, adults, families, and communities. Grounded in a public health and harm reduction approach aligned with Prevention First’s mission, this session will explore emerging trends and provide practical, stigma-free strategies and Illinois-specific resources to support healthier outcomes across the continuum of care.

Presenter: Anita Pindiur

A representative of each RSUPIC to sit on a panel including a representative from DBHR to discuss the work of the RSUPICs as well as the overall idea of integrating prevention into all other work with youth.

Presenters: Jeannette Obeius, Tyiesha Trina, Kristin Davis, Shantel High, and James Lones

Youth‑serving professionals collect more data than ever, but too often, that information sits unused, disconnected from the decisions that shape programming. This session reframes data as a practical, human‑centered tool for designing programs that are responsive, culturally attuned, and effective. Participants will learn how to gather meaningful insights using simple, low‑lift methods; how to interpret school, community, and statewide data; and how to translate those insights into clear action steps and realistic program plans. Drawing from real examples, the presenter will demonstrate how data collected at events, in classrooms, and through youth voice has directly informed program development, from small school‑based initiatives to community‑wide prevention efforts.

Presenter: Hannah Ewoldt

When a treatment-based professional interacts with a client, do they focus on the immediate problem, or on the building blocks for long-term healthy outcomes? Too often, prevention is treated as an afterthought in helping relationships something mentioned briefly after the “real” work is done. This session challenges that model, making the case that prevention and treatment are not sequential but simultaneous, and that every professional interaction is an opportunity to embed prevention as a core rather than complementary value. Presenters will examine what it looks like when helping professionals truly integrate a prevention lens into their practice, explore the evidence on why behavior change is hard not because of client resistance or poor professional effort, but because the environments people return to often actively work against change and facilitate honest dialogue about how practitioners can work more ecologically, accounting for the home and community that shape health outcomes.

Presenters: Esther Peeters, Aerin Cockrum, Matt Hutchins, and Matt Warner

Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) are widely used in prevention, but often misinterpreted as predictors of inevitable outcomes. This session challenges that assumption and focuses on resilience, protective factors, and real-world application. Participants will explore what ACEs research actually tells us, the difference between trauma-aware and trauma-informed approaches, and how to translate these insights into changes in program design, delivery, and environment.

Presenter: Trudy Schaffner