NASPA Peer Education Conference

Presentations submitted under this category should be designed to build skills and capacities of individual peer educators, peer education groups, and/or advisors. For example, programs might focus on the successful retention of peer educators, how to facilitate group meetings, or training peer education groups on specific core leadership competencies (assessment, public speaking, feedback, program planning, motivational interviewing, etc.) or topical content areas (e.g. sexual health, active lifestyles, alcohol and drug knowledge, bystander skills, etc.).

• Develop individual hard and/or soft skills that will enhance an individual's capacity in their role as a peer educator and/or advisor.

• Evaluate current research and best practices around contemporary health education topics to build high impact programming

• Reflect on different leadership styles and how they support and enhance individual and group development.

• Develop leadership, supervision and mentorship skills centering accessibility, diversity, equity, and inclusion for peer educators and/or advisors.

Learning outcomes for presentations submitted to this category might include:

• After attending this session, peer educators will understand how to use active listening techniques during program presentation to address audience responses.

• Participants attending this session will be able to define the difference and articulate approaches to supervising, advising, or mentoring peer education groups.

• During this session, attendees will identify their own personal conflict management style and practice how to mediate peer conflict.

Try answering one or more of the following prompting questions in your submission:

• What specific skills or content information would a participant to this session hope to leave with?

• How will the skills developed through attending this session benefit a peer educator or an advisor in the work done back on campus?

• How can participants attending this session apply this knowledge on their campus?

Presentations submitted under this category should be designed to explore ways in which student-led programs and initiatives are evolving and innovative. For example, sessions might feature a campus case-study of how a program can be adapted to a different institutional type, how groups advocated for wellness policy changes, how peer education groups used a creative approach to social media, or how data informed a program redesign.

• Identify innovative and promising approaches for prevention, harm-reduction, and risk-reduction programming.

• Articulate how to train students to apply innovative strategies to problem-solving.

• Examine how successful programs or initiatives can be adapted to a variety of campus contexts.

• Illustrate through case studies how peer education groups can build collaborative campus relationships to support students engaging in high-risk behaviors.

• Utilize evaluation data to build capacity, inform programming, and promote campus engagement.

Learning outcomes for program presentations to this category might include:

• Participants attending this session will be able to adapt a social media strategy for reaching a wider audience in the weeks leading up to spring break.

• Participants will be able to identify how peer educators could support initiatives across the five actions of health promotion

• After attending this session, participants will be able create a plan to implement a program addressing nutrition specifically to commuter students.

Try answering one or more of the following prompting questions in your submission:

• What was the process of designing the program that will be discussed in the presentation?

• What were the challenges faced in the design, implementation, or evaluation of the program?

• What were the successes – both anticipated and unanticipated – of the program?

• How could a very similar institution’s peer education group successfully replicate this program?

• How could a very different institution’s peer education group adapt this program to be successful on their campus?

Presentations submitted under this category should be designed to raise awareness of and prepare peer educators and/or advisors for emerging trends and issues which may impact the delivery of peer education on campus. Presentations submitted under this category may explore how campuses are implementing initiatives that respond to the ever-changing campus and global environment.

• Identify current and emerging issues impacting peer educators, groups, and/or advisors.

• Discuss campus, community, and digital wellness trends that peer educators and/or advisors need to be aware of.

• Highlight best practices for amplifying the voices and experiences of historically marginalized populations engaging in peer education work.

• Identify changes and explore solutions in peer education group development, recruitment, and retention due to societal, cultural, and political climate.

Learning outcomes for presentations submitted to this category might include:

• After attending this session, participants will be able to plan for changes in administrative funding while maintaining quality peer education efforts.

• Participants attending this session will be able to define new state laws surrounding personal cannabis use for individuals over age 21.

• Participants attending this session will discuss the role of personal identity in peer education work and be able to deliver peer education curricula surrounding racial identity.

Try answering one or more of the following prompting questions in your submission:

• What is a specific emerging trend or issue that peer educators and advisors need to have more knowledge or awareness of?

• Will campuses be making changes because of the new trend or issue? Why or why not?

• How will participants attending this session continue to develop understanding on the topic after this session is completed?

• How will the new or emerging trend or issue impact the delivery of peer education?

• What are the issues that peer education groups are facing?

• What specific skills or capacities would a participant to this session be prepared to use to help their peer education group succeed?

Types of sessions available to deliver your proposal content:

Program reviewers rely on a well-written description to enhance their understanding of the content and goals of the presentation. The conference planning committees encourage program proposals with proven practices and content that will engage participants in fruitful discussions and provide meaningful content to bring back to their campuses.

Successful proposals should include: 

• Lengthy description about session content that you will present.
• Relationship of the program to the conference themes outlined below in 'Conference Themes & Learning Outcomes'
• Identification of the program format (e.g., lecture, panel, debate) including methods for participant involvement (e.g., discussion, effective practice sharing, case study analysis).
• Discussions of replicability: to what extent can the information presented in this program be replicated at other institutions?
• Evidence of the conceptual foundation for proposal content including ways the program content is grounded in research, relevant experience, a cogent model, or appropriate theory.
  • Program proposals should establish a clear connection to the research, framework, model, or theory included in their discussions.
  • A list of references to relevant research, models, or theory must be listed in the "References" section. 

Tips:

• Draft and save your work in a word processing program to ensure you keep a copy for your records. When you are ready, copy and paste the your description and outline into the text box below. 
• There are no word limits on this section. Please provide enough details so that program reviewers can understand the breadth, depth, and scope of your program. This description will not be printed in the program book, website, or otherwise.
• Ensure correct spelling and grammar.

For additional tips, please visit NASPA’s Program Submission Guidelines: https://www.naspa.org/events/program-submission-guidelines.  

The AODVP conference planning committee invites you to submit sessions that meet the themes and learning outcomes below. We ask that you consider the CDC’s published definitions of substance use and violence prevention as you prepare your program submissions. 

Campus or Community Coalitions and Partnerships

• Understand the ways in which diverse stakeholders across the campus and the larger community can work collaboratively to address alcohol and other drug use/misuse or violence prevention and best serve the needs of campus community members

• Analyze models of collaboration, case studies from integrated systems, successful partnerships, and efforts to engage all stakeholders in prevention efforts, including individual and environmental level strategies

• Identify and evaluate health promotion efforts for alcohol and other drug misuse and violence prevention through collective impact

• Explore how campuses are addressing violence prevention with an intersectional lens including (but not limited to) mental health, substance use/misuse, and health promotion. 

If you are interested in submitting under this theme, it might be helpful to ask yourself: How have you utilized campus or community collaboration to build and implement policy? How can you or have you utilized coalition work to navigate restrictions or bans on DEI while still providing inclusive programming and prevention? How have you built partnerships with unique groups, offices, departments, organizations?

Current Trends and Emerging Issues in an Ever-Changing Environment

• Analyze ongoing data and research surrounding alcohol and other drug misuse or campus violence prevention efforts, especially those addressing use patterns and implications for college students (including cannabis and its products, fake pills, and illicit fentanyl)

• Evaluate the scope of alcohol and other drug misuse on campus as well as its relationship to academic attainment, sense of belonging and retention 

• Evaluate the scope of alcohol and other drug misuse and campus violence and the intersection with other prevention efforts (suicide prevention, sexual violence and harm, interpersonal violence, etc.)

• Explore considerations for health equity in prevention efforts for alcohol and other drug misuse and violence prevention 

• Amplify the voices and experiences around alcohol and other drug misuse and campus violence of underrepresented populations

• Identify best practices for campus, local, state or federal policies surrounding alcohol and other drugs in the current socio political climate

• Explore innovative solutions and best practices from other fields to identify areas of application

• Understand the ways in which campus prevention staff are successfully educating students about general alcohol and other drug misuse and polysubstance use.  

If you are interested in submitting under this theme, it might be helpful to ask yourself: How has your campus supported the increasing accessibility and education around use of naloxone and fentanyl test strips? How has the decriminalization, legalization and regulation of Cannabis and its products affect your campus community? How have recent bans/restrictions on DEI work impacted your alcohol, other drug, and violence prevention practices? How have you navigated policies/guidance to provide inclusive programming and prevention? 

Evidence-Based and Evidence Informed Practices

• Examine how evidence-based prevention strategies can be modified to fit varying institutions, communities, populations, and resource levels

• Identify evidence-based and evidence informed programs and strategies while navigating campus, local, state or federal policies surrounding alcohol and other drugs. 

• Explore replicable and adaptable evidence-based policies, programs, and practices

• Evaluate the efficacy and fidelity of prevention strategies led through a variety of technical modalities 

• Articulate how to support students who choose not to use alcohol and other drugs and those in recovery communities, using promising theory-based  strategies, and provide guidance for replication within a variety of settings. 

If you are interested in submitting under this theme, it might be helpful to ask yourself: Is there a case study example of the way we are using evidence to inform our prevetion work? What is that evidence? How are we utilizing CollegeAIM? How are we partnering with Faculty? How can other campuses adopt and implement an evidence-based or evidence-informed program for theiy campus context?

The Strategic Prevention Framework 

• Use local data to assess drug misuse and related problems; risk and protective factors, and capacity for prevention

• Build capacity (i.e., resources and readiness) to take action to address prevention priorities

• Plan how to best address identified prevention needs and associated factors, ensuring it is designed to meet the specific needs of the campus and/or surrounding

• Implement evidence-based and evidence-informed programs and strategies according to a strategically developed prevention plan

• Evaluate the processes and outcomes of the prevention interventions to reduce uncertainty, improve effectiveness, and make decisions

• Address issues around cultural competency and cultural humility and their importance in prevention efforts

• Build sustainability into all efforts in the spectrum of prevention and health promotion to maintain desired long-term results

 If you are interested in submitting under this theme, it might be helpful to ask yourself: How are you using the Strategic Prevention Framework? What are lessons/case studies you can share around implementation? How are you building sustainability in your prevention work? How are people, places, and systems empowering prevention professionals around political navigation, professional empowerment, and garnering buy-in from across campus?

Creating Capacity

• Explore new and innovative service models to address growing client waiting lists, increased demand, and limited or reduced provider capacity.

• Identify and explore the intersections among the multiple and very complex roles assumed by mental health professionals, including clinical, advocacy, administrative, and other roles.

• Identify challenges, successes, and lessons learned in addressing administrative, financial, and other barriers to student access to mental health services.

• Explore effective strategies to promote help-seeking and referral to mental health services.

• Highlight innovative strategies to promote equitable access and inclusion in mental health service delivery across the prevention and intervention spectrum.

• Identify new and innovative strategies to promote increased awareness of and access to mental health services for students.

• Identify the unique challenges to and develop strategies for recruiting and retaining mental health staff on college campuses.

• Explore approaches for preventing and addressing professional burnout, especially as it relates to intersectional identities.

Cross-Campus Collaboration and Coordination

• Highlight successful interdisciplinary and interdepartmental collaboration models.

• Explore models of successful collaborations with local, state, and national organizations aimed to promote mental health on campus.

• Develop strategies to successful cross-campus collaboration in the delivery of mental health services.

• Explore how mental health intersects with violence prevention and response,  substance use, and collegiate recovery efforts on campus.

Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging

• Identify barriers to mental health and well-being among traditionally underserved and historically marginalized populations and strategies to address social justice and identity-related stress.

• Highlight models supporting the provision of inclusive services, as well as the recruitment, hiring, and retention of diverse staff members to respond to current and emerging student needs.

• Discuss the strategic, ethical, and practical aspects of diversity, equity, and inclusion on the delivery of mental health services and the promotion of a healthy environment for all members of the campus community.

• Explore the mental health needs of students representing individual and cultural diversity and best practices to respond to these needs within the contextual framework of power and privilege.

Current Trends and Emerging Issues

• Highlight innovative and effective programming across the public health spectrum focused on supporting and enhancing student mental health.

• Examine current national trends and socio-political  issues and their relationship to the provision of mental health services on campus (e.g., abortion support access, transgender healthcare).

• Identify effective treatment strategies to address depression, anxiety, post-traumatic stress, substance misuse, risk for suicide, and other mental health concerns experienced by college students.

• Explore professional and ethical considerations in the delivery of mental health services.

• Explore new and innovative strategies to support the engagement of students, faculty, staff members, and administrators on campus.

• Examine barriers as well as solutions to providing increased mental health support and outreach on campus.

• Identify strategies to effectively communicate the need for increased resources to the institution.

• Discuss strategies to address and overcome institutional barriers.

• Explore strategies to address basic needs scarcity with college students (i.e., housing, food, transportation).

• Analyze the complex interplay between social, environmental, and individual factors that contribute to the mental health consequences of gun violence.

Successful and Innovative Solutions

• Explore innovative and effective strategies that are relevant and responsive to a range of target populations, including first-year students, student-athletes, veterans, international students, first-year students, students with families, students from equity deserving groups, survivors of trauma, and other groups.

• Highlight  innovative and effective programming across the public health spectrum focused on supporting and enhancing student mental health.

• Explore new and innovative strategies, programs, and policies to promote student resilience, connection, and belonging. 

• Identify strategies and practices that reimagine the intersection of resilience among mental health professionals during an epidemic (e.g., COVID, social justice, opioid, mental health).

• Explore strategies for campus stakeholder collaboration aimed at developing unified and actionable mental health and wellbeing goals and messaging.

• Identify effective strategies for communicating to students the variety of mental health resources that exist on a college campus.

For more detailed information visit the Peer Education Conference website. 

Individual Skill Building and Leadership Development

• Develop individual hard and/or soft skills that will enhance an individual's capacity in their role as a peer educator and/or advisor.

• Evaluate current research and best practices around contemporary health education topics to build high impact programming

• Reflect on different leadership styles and how they support and enhance individual and group development.

• Develop leadership, supervision and mentorship skills centering accessibility, diversity, equity, and inclusion for peer educators and/or advisors.

Adaptable Solutions and Creative Approaches to Programming and/or System-Level Change 

• Identify innovative and promising approaches for prevention, harm-reduction, and risk-reduction programming.

• Articulate how to train students to apply innovative strategies to problem-solving.

• Examine how successful programs or initiatives can be adapted to a variety of campus contexts.

• Illustrate through case studies how peer education groups can build collaborative campus relationships to support students engaging in high-risk behaviors.

• Utilize evaluation data to build capacity, inform programming, and promote campus engagement.

Current Trends and Emerging Issues in an Ever-Changing Global Environment

• Identify current and emerging issues impacting peer educators, groups, and/or advisors.

• Discuss campus, community, and digital wellness trends that peer educators and/or advisors need to be aware of.

• Highlight best practices for amplifying the voices and experiences of historically marginalized populations engaging in peer education work.

• Identify changes and explore solutions in peer education group development, recruitment, and retention due to societal, cultural, and political climate.

Personal, Professional, and Community Sustainability and Development

• Consider the implications of secondary trauma and explore opportunities to increase professional well-being and implement interventions to help prevent employee burnout.

• Explore strategies to establish personal and professional boundaries.

• Build institutional capacity through navigating external funding and/or internal institutional priorities.

• Develop cross-campus, local, state, and national relationships to build a network of creative and supportive professionals (advocates, prevention educators, etc.).

• Identify models of collaborative partnerships with diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts to increase effectiveness of prevention, response, policy, and advocacy efforts.

Evidence-informed Policy and Practice

• Identify evidence-informed approaches to power-based violence prevention and response from a range of disciplines/fields.

• Explore strategic use of assessment and data to inform and influence policies, programs, organization, infrastructure, and other higher order change that helps build a culture in which power-based violence is eliminated.

• Discuss best practices in: implementing sustainable, evidence-informed prevention programs; improving campus response to violence and those who have survived acts of violence; and evaluating the impact of these efforts.

• Review strategies for developing or revising comprehensive campus sexual misconduct policies, including how they are impacted by the latest federal and state legislative policy changes.

• Identify gaps that exist within evidence-informed policy and practice and discuss ways to address them.

Innovative Approaches to Prevention and Response

• Identify strategies, programs, and policies which are innovative and whose grounding in foundational theories, models, or frameworks make them promising in their efficacy.

• Describe project implementation and program evaluation associated with the initiatives listed above.

• Discuss innovative approaches to the prevention of and response to power-based violence in higher education, including discussions of lessons learned, assessment and evaluation, and replicability.

• Establish strategies for promoting trauma-informed activism and supporting students in creating meaningful change.

• Explore restorative and transformative justice and community based accountability practices.

• Identify strategies for introducing innovative approaches to prevention education.

Transforming Social Narratives

• Examine and interrupt the problematic dominant narratives of power-based violence (e.g., racism, sexism, heteronormativity, gender identity, ableism, U.S.-centrism), including narratives around those who experience violence and those who perpetrate violence.

• Describe the ways in which professionals who prevent and respond to violence participate in or shift dominant narratives (e.g., racism, sexism, heteronormativity, gender identity, ableism, U.S.-centrism) .

• Propose new perspectives, approaches, and strategies to honor all identities in power-based violence work.

• Identify practices that foster inclusive and equitable efforts to address power-based violence.

• Examine how society develops sexual scripts and the impact of those scripts. In the context of media, explore ways to increase media literacy and how this relates to the perpetuation of power-based violence. 

• Propose ways to decolonize safety by challenging traditional security methods and instead utilizing indigenous and community-led approaches.

Developing or Expanding Campus and Community Partnerships

• Discuss the ways in which a diversity of stakeholders from within and across the campus and the larger community can work collaboratively to address power-based violence and best serve the needs of campus community members.

• Describe models of collaboration, case studies from integrated systems, successful partnerships, and efforts to engage all stakeholders in power-based violence prevention and response.

• Describe collaboration and identify strategies for working with local, state, and national organizations to prevent and respond to campus power-based violence.

• Explore best practices for campus safety that go beyond the use of law enforcement to foster collaborative relationships with local organizations, implement preventive measures, and promote community engagement.

• Identify identity-specific resources within communities that specialize in serving marginalized communities. 

Engagement, Collaboration & Cross-functional Partnerships 

• Understand the importance of fostering engagement and collaboration for effective health promotion and well-being initiatives.

• Develop skills and strategies to establish, develop, lead, and maintain cross-functional partnerships for collaborative impact in promoting health and well-being. 

• Learn effective communication and advocacy techniques to engage and mobilize stakeholders across different departments and disciplines. 

• Gain insights into leadership approaches that support and enhance engagement, collaboration, and cross-functional partnerships for long-term success in advancing health promotion and well-being. 

• Describe various models of partnership and collaboration advancing flourishing campuses

• Leadership, capacity building, grow mid level professionals

Health Disparities, Biases, and Systemic Inequities of Well-being

• Develop a comprehensive understanding of the ways in which health disparities, biases, and systemic inequities manifest in underrepresented and marginalized populations and communities.

• Analyze the impact of social determinants of health disparities and inequities in higher education settings, and explore strategies to address them through health promotion initiatives. 

• Discuss the ways in which power differentials operate, are experienced, and are reinforced in the health promotion process at individual, group, community, institutional, and global levels.

• Explore innovative approaches and best practices for promoting health equity and well-being while reducing systemic inequities in diverse settings and communities. 

• Discuss how social, political, and historical movements have shaped health promotion strategies to intentionally address systems of power, privilege, and oppression in higher education settings.

• Develop leadership strategies and advocacy skills to support a campus culture driven by diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice.

Current Trends, Promising Practices, and Emerging Issues

• Identify promising practices that are theoretically grounded, evidence-informed and/or interdisciplinary to improve campus well-being.

• Compare and contrast mentorship, coaching, and organizational leadership models across institutions and their impact on well-being.

• Promote innovative practices addressing the social determinants of health, including health equity and environmental justice. 

• Identify and share best practices that campuses have utilized, integrating new guidance, to create healthy and well communities.

• Describe future trends in systemic well-being on university campuses.

• Examine innovative programming in the field of health promotion.

Data, Policies, Laws, and Research to Advance Well-being

• Discover how data is gathered, disaggregated, contextualized, shared and utilized by campus community members for health promotion.

• Using data and research to tell stories of our campus communities to build champions, influence decisions, develop resources, and advocate for policy change.

• Describe the complexity of data and its use in building a salutogenic narrative.

• Identify institutional, local and national policy changes that are showing promise in their proposal or implementation stage.

Foundations for Health Promotion

• Learn effective strategies for developing leadership qualities and promoting professional growth. 

• Apply foundational frameworks and principles for health promotion strategies in higher education.

• Describe the progression of health promotion in higher education leading for a clear understanding of current industry standards.

• Develop marketing and communication strategies to model effective health and well-being initiatives.

• Sustaining hope, resiliency, and impact through cultivating community within health promotion

Essential Ecosystems and Infrastructure for Change- Centering Well-being in Person, Place and Planet 

• Discover ways to synergize sustainability, equity and health using a settings and systems approach.

• Foster a viable infrastructure to impact system change and create a culture of well-being. 

• Explore how planetary health serves as a primary driver of well-being.

• Describe opportunities for systems change through coalition-building, collective impact, or other collective-minded approaches

• Apply theories and practical principles of the settings-based approach