{"id":15904,"date":"2025-10-30T14:40:57","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T20:40:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-seeks-372k-grant-to-curb-youth-substance-misuse\/"},"modified":"2026-03-31T03:52:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-31T03:52:09","slug":"montezuma-county-seeks-372k-grant-to-curb-youth-substance-misuse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/montezuma-county-seeks-372k-grant-to-curb-youth-substance-misuse\/","title":{"rendered":"Montezuma County seeks $372K grant to curb youth substance misuse"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><figure class=\"wp-block-image naviga-inline-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/imengine.public.prod.dur.navigacloud.com\/?uuid=7db706c0-26fd-5907-8f2f-7b3d09386612&amp;function=cover&amp;type=preview&amp;source=false&amp;width=2000\" width=\"1600\" height=\"1200\" alt=\"Montezuma County Public Health Dept. office in Cortez. (Benjamin Rubin\/The Journal)\" class=\"naviga-image\" loading=\"lazy\"><figcaption><span class=\"caption\">Montezuma County Public Health Dept. office in Cortez. (Benjamin Rubin\/The Journal)<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>\n<p>The Montezuma County Board of County Commissioners on Tuesday unanimously approved an application for a Colorado public health grant meant to fund the prevention of substance misuse, particularly among youths.<\/p>\n<p>The \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/cdphe.colorado.gov\/prevention-and-wellness\/injury-prevention\/cofp\/EPIC_RFA_49960377\" id=\"link-7f73a61be7d2e5354272b78d02f9d6c7\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Elevating Prevention in Colorado<\/a>\u201d grant would fund two new staff positions, said Katy Maxwell, the county public health planner. The request totals more than $372,000 over five years, according to the application shared during Monday\u2019s Board of County Commissioners workshop.<\/p>\n<p>The grant would focus on outreach and education, particularly through partnerships with local schools, according to a written summary presented at the meeting.<\/p>\n<p>A <a href=\"https:\/\/montezumacounty.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/05\/2025_CHA_Montezuma.pdf\" id=\"link-a653c153c6e7ff804bb3328c1a97d3bd\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">2025 county health assessment<\/a> found that 68% of 800 respondents identified substance use \u2013 including illegal drugs, alcohol and tobacco \u2013 as a top concern.<\/p>\n<p>From 2020 to 2023, Montezuma County\u2019s death rate from alcohol-related liver disease was 3.6 times the state average, the assessment says.<\/p>\n<p>Funding would come from the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment.<\/p>\n<p>Maxwell said Healthy Montezuma, an existing public health program, has led substance misuse prevention efforts. Two full-time employees would strengthen those efforts, she said.<\/p>\n<p>Commissioner Jim Candelaria asked how the program\u2019s impact would be measured. Maxwell said one of the new hires would track progress.<\/p>\n<p>Maxwell said part of the funding would \u201cbe looking at things like how many outreach events we\u2019re attending, how many people we\u2019re engaging in those things.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>\u201cAnd then we also want to do pre- and post- surveys with the groups that we work with so that we can kind of look at those surveys as an ongoing measure of progress.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Substance use was a priority in recent community health assessment<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":15279,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[28,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-15904","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-headlines","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15904","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15904"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15904\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19906,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15904\/revisions\/19906"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/15279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15904"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15904"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15904"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=15904"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}