Healthy Middletown will operate without 5-year grant

The Coalition for a Healthy Middletown has not been approved for another five-year grant and will operate without a project coordinator, said DeAnna Shores, who held that position the past three years.

The coalition was founded in 2008 as a response to a town hall meeting on underage drinking, Shores said. Since then, the coalition has been active in Middletown by promoting the importance of substance abuse prevention.

She said the coalition received a $500,000 Drug Free Communities grant through the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration and the Office of National Drug Control Policy in 2011, and recently learned that grant wasn’t renewed. Shores said on Tuesday it was with “great disappointment” that she announced Sept. 30 marked the end of the fiscal year.

Shores said the coalition has “proven that the power of collaboration can shift the atmosphere and create long lasting community change.”

Without the funds, the coalition will return to its “grassroots campaign,” Shores said. That means Kristy Duritsch, director of Safety Council of Southwestern Ohio, will oversee the coalition and will rely on volunteers. Shores said some of the programs that were funded by the grant will be eliminated or reduced.

Duritsch said the coalition will reapply for the grant next spring and noted the Fairfield Coalition did not get funded in its sixth year, but reapplied and got the next five years funding the following cycle.

Shores said she isn’t sure about her future employment plans.

“The right thing has always found me,” she said. “I’ll all about planting seeds.”

Shores and her ability to connect with others and her love for this community will be “missed tremendously,” Duritsch said.

Duritsch said the coalition survived three years before the grant, but the money allowed the agency to fund that dedicated person to focus on “building relationships and partnerships” within the community.

“That takes time and effort and is so very important,” Duritsch said. “In my opinion, we need more positions like this. So many times when budgets gets cut and people get more work piled on them, this valuable effort is reduced or eliminated.”

Duritsch stressed the coalition will continue to meet and work on various prevention projects. The agency will rely more heavily on mini grants, donations and other partners’ contributions, she said.

“We all want to live in a healthy community free from substance abuse and hopefully the community will be willing to contribute to the prevention efforts,” she said. “Prevention dollars go a lot farther than treatment and that has always been our focus… preventing youth from ever going down that road.”