OUR APPROACH.

VISION.
​A community empowering youth with skills and resources to become compassionate, healthy adults.

MISSION.
Cultivating connections to mobilize our community for positive change.

VALUES.
Engage. Empower. Educate.
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A PUBLIC HEALTH APPROACH.​​
Public health is "What we, as a society, do collectively to assure the conditions for people to be healthy" (National Academies Press).

Our coalition uses a public health approach. What does that mean? Fundamentally the Coalition for Orcas Youth is working to change conditions to promote wellbeing across the community. We work upstream to build strengths in the community to prevent problems from occurring before it happens.

​Our process is also data-driven. We use data from our community - Healthy Youth Survey data, a  statewide survey administered by the public school, and publicly available data - to focus efforts on the most important risk and protective factors in our community.

Risk factors increase the likelihood of MORE problems, so we want to DECREASE THEM for our youth (point to down arrow for risk factors on slide). Protective factors increase the likelihood of fewer problems, so we want to increase those.