By Steve Miller, CRPS

Each year, communities across the country pause for a moment that isn’t really about pausing at all - it’s about moving. Moving conversations forward. Moving people closer together. Moving prevention out of the margins and into everyday life.

National Prevention Week (NPW), led by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), is more than a campaign, it’s an invitation to recognize the power of prevention, celebrate community strengths, and take meaningful steps toward healthier, more connected lives. At its core, prevention is not just about stopping something from happening. It’s about building something stronger in its place.

Prevention doesn’t always get the spotlight. It works quietly, often upstream, before a crisis emerges. But its impact is everywhere; when a young person chooses connection over isolation, a parent feels confident enough to start a hard conversation, or a community conversation shifts from stigma to support.

National Prevention Week gives us a shared moment to make that invisible work visible. It reminds us that prevention is not a program - it’s a culture. One built through relationships, shared responsibility, and everyday actions that support well-being.

This Year’s Focus: Prevention is Personal and Collective

SAMHSA’s NPW resources emphasize that prevention happens across multiple areas of life, including:

But here’s where it really comes alive; prevention is not just something professionals do, it’s something communities live. That’s where your voice comes in.

One of the most powerful ways to engage in National Prevention Week is by participating in the #MyPreventionStory campaign.

This isn’t about polished messaging or perfect language. It’s about real experiences. Think about moments like, a time you made a different choice, a conversation that changed your perspective, a person, song, or experience that grounded you, or a small action that made a big difference.

When people share their stories, something shifts. Prevention becomes relatable. Human. Possible.

You can participate by: posting on social media using #MyPreventionStory, sharing a short reflection with your organization or coalition, inviting others in your network to contribute their own stories, creating a visual, audio, or written narrative. Stories don’t just inform - they create connections - one of the strongest protective factors we have.

Continue reading about how to get involved in National Prevention Week

Across complex systems, it’s natural for work to take shape in pockets - defined by geography, funding streams, or areas of expertise. Over time, these pockets can begin to function as silos, not out of intention, but as a byproduct of how systems are structured. National networks of multiple organizations can be established voluntarily or sometimes by a funding organization that is focused on collective problem solving. Such networks can represent both the strength and the challenge of distributed leadership.

In a network of organizations, each brings deep knowledge, strong relationships, and innovative approaches tailored to its communities. That localized expertise is essential. At the same time, the challenges the network seeks to address are interconnected, layered, and shared.

This creates an opportunity for reflection: what becomes possible when strong, individual organization work is more consistently visible, connected, and integrated across the broader network? In a Stanford Social Innovation Review article Fostering Collaboration Through Communications it states, "change led by only a few is less effective and more short-lived than change led by many." 

When programming and outreach efforts remain primarily contained within single entities, there is a risk of missed alignment, duplicated efforts, untapped partnerships, and insights that don’t fully travel. But when connections are strengthened across organizations, something different begins to emerge. Patterns become clearer. Resources stretch further. Innovation accelerates through shared learning.

In this way, collaboration is not simply about working together; it is about building coherence across a system, and coherence is where resilience takes root. A connected network can adapt more quickly, respond more thoughtfully, and evolve more effectively because it is informed by the whole, not just its parts.

There is also a growing opportunity to make this interconnectedness more visible. Platforms like LinkedIn offer a simple but powerful way to highlight partnerships, amplify shared work, and tell a more collective story. When collaboration is visible, it becomes easier to replicate, and over time, it becomes part of the culture. When we focus on affiliation and a network effect, this can lead to a network influence that can then lead to abundance for all involved. The PTTC Network is committed to a philosophy of affiliation across our network of Regional Centers so we can equip the prevention workforce with evidence-based tools, training and resources to prevent substance use before it starts and strengthen communities.

Resource: (Cornell, S., & Moore, D. (2025). Fostering Collaboration Through Communications. Stanford Social Innovation Review. https://doi.org/10.48558/BR7S-VY71).

The National Prevention Network (NPN) Conference brings together federal, state, and local professionals in substance use prevention, including prevention providers, school personnel, government representatives, law enforcement, policymakers, coalition leaders, counselors, health education specialists, and social workers.

The conference highlights the latest research in substance use prevention, providing a forum for sharing research, best practices, and promising evaluation results to integrate research into prevention practice.

Early Bird registration closes on July 15th, with full conference and one-day pass options available. For more information and details visit the NPN Conference website.

Funding for this initiative was made possible by grant no. 1H79SP084314 from SAMHSA. The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the official policies of the Department of Health and Human Services; nor does mention of trade names, commercial practices, or organizations imply endorsement by the U.S. Government.