Whitehall area’s Communities That Care (CTC) action committee came together at Faith Evangelical Lutheran Church April 21 to discuss important news and events that people in the community should be aware of.

Whitehall Township Board of Commissioners President Phillips Armstrong was officially presented with the award he had received earlier in the year during CTC’s annual meeting.

Mayor Edward D. Hozza Jr. also was acknowledged at the meeting for being named Lehigh Valley Mayor of the Year for the second time.

Chad Stefanyak was recognized as the CTC member who initially pointed out the data showing the hunger issue in the Whitehall-Coplay School District.

Shari Noctor was lauded for taking on this hunger issue as a project, which now has become Whitehall Area Hunger Initiative. Noctor is currently spreading the word to students and their families about the summer feeding program at St. John’s Lutheran Church, Fullerton. The program will continue through the summer.

Throughout the majority of the CTC meeting, a “Back to the Future” activity took place for its members. The activity traced the roots of the CTC model in Lehigh County through a time line presentation from when it first began to the point it is currently in the Whitehall-Coplay area. The time line began with the year 2002 when the Penn State Prevention Research Center received a grant from NIDA and NIMH to implement the PROSPER model - PROmote School/community/university Partnership to Enhance Resilience. This all began as a research project to determine what would happen when evidence-based programs and the community collaborate.

In 2003, PROSPER began in seven communities in Pennsylvania. In Lehigh County, the two schools that first implemented the PROSPER model were Northern Lehigh and Salisbury Middle School. From 2003 to 2006, all programs and team activities involved with the PROSPER model were funded through a grant. In 2007, the grant stopped covering programs but continued to cover team and research costs, so local funding was needed. However, that same year, Salisbury received a DCED grant in order to implement the Strengthening Families Program (SFP).

From 2008 all the way to this year, Valley Youth House continues to partner with Penn State Extension and supports SFP. The top four priorities of the Penn State Extension include perceived low risk of drug use, parental attitudes favorable toward anti-social behavior, community opportunities for pro-social involvement and food insecurity.

Continuing the time line in 2011 was the beginning of the CTC model, which started from a conversation between Center for Humanistic Change (CHC) Inc. and Penn State Extension. Whitehall High School officials really liked the idea, and Salisbury incorporated the CTC model with its PROSPER model in order to enlarge its overall program.

From 2012 to 2014, CHC Inc. and Penn State Extension were funded by the Pennsylvania Commission for Crime and Delinquency (PCCD) in order to develop CTC models in both communities.

Also in 2012, both school districts administered Pennsylvania Youth Surveys (PAYS) to sixth-, eighth-, 10th- and 12th-grade students, and PAYS data analysis and coalition training took place. This was the same year Whitehall-Coplay School District determined its five priorities based on the PAYS data, which are drug and alcohol prevention education, prevention education for parents, community recognition of youth for pro-social behaviors, decreasing hunger among children and families, and increasing awareness of career options after high school.

In 2013, Whitehall-Coplay Hunger Initiative was born. It is now recognized as the Whitehall Area Hunger Initiative.

In 2015, PAYS was administered again, and then the following summer in 2016, the data was analyzed.

Also in 2015, the Snack Pack Pals program began in regards to the hunger issue in Whitehall. The goal here is to send food home on long weekends with students who have the greatest need. Originally, Snack Pack Pals sent food home with 50 students; however, the most recent distribution provided 113 students with food.

Denise Continenza, family and consumer sciences educator with Penn State Extension, Lehigh and Northampton counties, said, “This is good news in that we have the capacity to meet the needs of the students; however, it is also not so good news in that we continue to see a growing need in our community. But, together we are working to keep our community healthy, and this is what matters.”

In 2016, the first community meal was served to 13 people, which can be compared to the highest number of people that the community meal served - 120.

This year, CTC also took on a new meaning - a model for how a coalition model can be both data driven and a conduit for evidence-based prevention.