Healthy Communities Coalition of Lyon and Storey Featured In New Book
Healthy Communities Coalition of Lyon and Storey is featured in a new book that focuses on eight communities throughout the U.S. which have been especially creative in supporting the unique strengths and needs of each community’s youth.
The book, "Building Healthy Communities for Positive Youth Development" by Michael J. Nakkula, Karen C. Foster, Marc Mannes and Shenita Bolstrom, devotes a chapter called “The Next New Frontier” on the work of Healthy Communities Coalition, praising the coalition’s “adroit leadership” and noting that the “complexity of this coalition is a testament to the leaders’ fierce respect for the identities forged by each of” the unique towns in Lyon and Storey counties.
The authors, who conducted extensive on-site interviews and research in Lyon and Storey, write that, “ In many respects, Healthy Communities Coalition (HCC) is a stunning illustration of the collaborative ethos and grassroots organization characteristic of the rural initiatives in the communities we studied. For sparsely populated communities, separated by vast distances, collaboration is a necessity for accessing a range of services and youth development opportunities….The leadership of HCC has engaged the 6 different towns and their surrounding communities across northern Nevada into a partnership of some 250 members actively mobilized on behalf of strength-based work supporting youth and the health of the community more generally… HCC operates through an infrastructure of six community task forces, each of which proposes asset-building activities to the coalition's larger governing body, which grants funding and shares info across the network…each task force implements activities within its geographic area [because] what’s best for one community might not be best of a neighboring community…”
Christy McGill, director of Healthy Communities Coalition, stressed that “Coalitions are only as strong as the partners willing to collaborate and we are blessed with an active membership of community volunteers and diverse groups that meet monthly to discuss how best to support the health and well being of our communities.”
The authors of the book include:
Michael J. Nakkula, Ed.D., a professor of education at the University of Pennsylvania’s Graduate School of Education who teaches courses on adolescent development and the intersection of counseling, mentoring, and education within public schools. Previously, he was the longtime co-director of Harvard’s Risk and Prevention master’s program where he designed and studied a number of initiatives that support the developmental opportunities for low-income youth.
Karen C. Foster, Ed.D., a former research associate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education, has spent the past four years as an external evaluator and consultant to the Ohio Board of Regents studying the impact of a state wide initiative to improve the quality of science and mathematics teacher education in the public schools.
Marc Mannes, Ph.D., who currently leads the Chicago office of Booz Allen Hamilton. Mannes spent a decade as director of applied research at Search Institute, where he oversaw the organization’s community research agenda and the extension of the Developmental Assets Frameworks to children.
Shenita Bolstrom, MS, a clinical research associate in the Neuromodulation business at Medtronic, Inc. Prior to joining Medtronic, Inc., she was field research coordinator at Search Institute, where she worked on research projects in the areas of community and social change, families and parenting, and youth development programs and practices.
Their book, "Building Healthy Communities for Positive Youth Development" is available at most book sellers, including Amazon and Borders.
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