About BRACC
We serve the Vermont towns and school communities of Ludlow, Plymouth, Mt. Holly and Chester.
For over 20 years, The Black River Area Community Coalition (BRACC) has been a collaboration of individuals, schools, health professionals, law enforcement, businesses, and local decision-makers working toward a shared goal to support positive youth development.
We provide youth, parents, schools, and community-serving organizations with educational resources that increase awareness around current substance use issues. We look at local and regional data to identify trends in substance use, and we compare that data to our own assessments to understand what these issues really look like at the community level. The results of our research helps us determine what our community needs are so that we can find solutions and develop programs that respond to those needs.
A model for our work...
Our approach to this work is guided by the Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF), which is a model developed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) to help prevention planners understand and address the substance misuse and related behavioral health problems facing their states and communities.
The SPF structure is simple:
ASSESSMENT - what’s the problem?
CAPACITY - what do we have to work with?
PLANNING - what should we do, and how should we do it?
IMPLEMENTATION - how can we put this plan into action?
EVALUATION - is this plan succeeding?
BRACC works in partnership with The Collaborative, empowering healthy youth and families across Southern VT.
In 2002, BRACC grew out of the concern and interest expressed by parents and community leaders to work proactively towards reducing high risk behaviors of the young people in the Black River Area.
Projects Coordinator Lauren Ingersoll was hired in 2022 by The Collaborative (our current fiscal sponsor) to bring BRACC back to life after a period of operational standstill following the closing of the Ludlow High School in 2019 and the CoVID pandemic. The Collaborative, now providing BRACC with administrative capacity, is a substance misuse organization working regionally in Bennington and Windsor Counties for the last 25 years. The Collaborative shares its office space with BRACC on the grounds of the Flood Brook Elementary School in Londonderry.
We are a 501c3 organization, a member of the Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA), and a partner to several local, regional and state prevention organizations including the Vermont Department of Health, Green Peak Alliance, The Collaborative, Prevention Works! VT, Turning Point Recovery, Divided Sky Foundation, Greater Falls Connections, Vermont Afterschool.
