The 2027 AODVP conference planning committee invites sessions that meet the themes and learning outcomes below. Consider reviewing the CDC's published definitions of substance use and violence prevention as you prepare your submissions.

Campus or Community Coalitions and Partnerships

How have you utilized campus or community collaboration to build and implement policy, navigate restrictions on DEI while still providing inclusive programming, or build partnerships with unique groups, offices, departments, and organizations?

• Understand how diverse partners across campus and the larger community can work collaboratively to address alcohol and other drug use/misuse or violence prevention and best serve campus community members.
• Recognize the role faculty and staff in academic units can play in collaborating with AODVP and contributing to campus environments that support student well-being and success.
• Analyze models of collaboration, case studies from integrated systems, successful partnerships, and efforts to engage all partners — 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 mental health, substance use/misuse, and health promotion.
• Explore examples of community building amongst faculty, staff, and allies who are in recovery.

Current Trends and Emerging Issues in an Ever-Changing Environment

How has your campus supported accessibility and education around naloxone and fentanyl test strips? How have decriminalization, legalization, and regulation of cannabis affected your community? How have DEI restrictions impacted your practices? What rising drug trends are influencing your programming?

• Analyze ongoing data and research on alcohol, tobacco, and other drug misuse or campus violence prevention, especially use patterns and implications for college students (cannabis and its products, fake pills, hallucinogens, anabolic steroids, illicit fentanyl).
• Analyze the influence of social media and pop culture trends (e.g., “looksmaxxing,” influencer-driven aesthetics, algorithm-amplified norms) on student health behaviors, identity formation, and risk perceptions to design responsive, evidence-informed strategies.
• Evaluate the scope of alcohol and other drug misuse on campus and its relationship to academic attainment, sense of belonging, and retention.
• Evaluate the scope of AODV and its intersection with other prevention efforts (suicide prevention, sexual violence, interpersonal violence, hazing prevention).
• Identify and examine emerging issues related to sober curious movements, support networks for students experiencing secondary harms, and AODV's role in holistic well-being.
• Examine issues related to addictive behaviors, including behavioral addictions such as gambling, disordered eating, compulsive sexual behavior, and online shopping.
• Amplify the voices and experiences of underrepresented populations around alcohol and other drug misuse and campus violence.
• Explore strategies and best practices for navigating changes in campus culture resulting from campus, local, state, or federal policies within the current sociopolitical climate.
• Identify strategies to support and sustain professionals and paraprofessionals in the AODVP field as they navigate the changing sociopolitical climate.

Evidence-Based and Evidence-Informed Practices

Is there a case study of how you use evidence to inform prevention work? How are you utilizing CollegeAIM, partnering with faculty, and helping other campuses adopt evidence-based programs?

• 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 policies surrounding alcohol and other drugs.
• Explore replicable and adaptable evidence-based policies, programs, and practices.
• Evaluate the efficacy and fidelity of prevention strategies delivered through a variety of technical modalities.
• Explore evidence-based strategies to foster a more inclusive campus culture that supports all students — including those in recovery, those who choose not to use, and those who identify as sober curious.
• Explore how to leverage evidence-informed public health theory to influence behavior change through communication best practices (e.g., digital engagement strategies).

The Strategic Prevention Framework

How are you using the Strategic Prevention Framework? What lessons can you share about navigating AODVP work during disruption (natural disasters, leadership change, campus crisis)? How are you building sustainability and empowering prevention professionals?

• Use local data to assess drug misuse and related problems, risk and protective factors, and capacity for prevention.
• Effectively communicate data-informed stories to advocate for relevant policy and programmatic changes in AODVP.
• Build capacity (resources and readiness) to take action to address prevention priorities.
• Plan how to best address identified prevention needs, ensuring efforts meet the specific needs of the campus and surrounding community.
• Implement evidence-based and evidence-informed programs and strategies according to a strategically developed prevention plan.
• Evaluate the processes and outcomes of prevention interventions to reduce uncertainty, improve effectiveness, and make decisions.
• Address cultural competency and cultural humility and their importance in prevention efforts.
• Build sustainability into all efforts across the spectrum of prevention and health promotion to maintain long-term results.

Providing Access to Mental Health Care

• Explore service delivery models that balance clinical capacity with demand (access to other providers, scope of practice, effectiveness of treatment, trainees, third-party contracts, stepped care).
• Examine barriers to accessing mental health care, including stigma and equity considerations, and identify successful strategies to reduce them.
• Highlight strategies to recruit and retain mental health staff, including inclusive, supportive work environments that prevent burnout.
• Identify funding models that enhance the sustainability of services, such as grants, philanthropy, and advocacy within the institution.

Effective Practice and Leadership

• Apply evidence-based treatment strategies for anxiety, depression, PTSD, substance misuse, risk for suicide, and other concerns of college students.
• Explore the mental health needs of students representing individual and cultural diversity, and best practices within the framework of power and privilege.
• Explore professional and ethical considerations in the delivery of mental health services.
• Identify relevant leadership competencies and practices (navigating organizational change, managing complex personnel concerns, developing effective teams).
• Explore ethical challenges faced by leaders in mental health decision-making and service prioritization.
• Describe competencies and skills for the different roles of mental health providers in higher education (outreach, consultation, supervision, BIT/CARE Team, networking, committees).

Collaboration and Mental Health Promotion

• Highlight successful collaborations and results (cross-campus collaborations, partnerships with local, state, or federal groups) for prevention and mental health promotion.
• Explore strategies for campus stakeholder collaboration to develop unified, actionable mental health and well-being goals and messaging.
• Identify methods for reaching traditionally underserved and historically marginalized populations to decrease stigma and address identity-related stress.
• Identify best practices for integrating mental health services with academic, health, recreation, accessibility, or other campus offices.
• Discuss collaborative initiatives that enhance the campus climate in ways that support student mental health and flourishing.

Current Trends and Innovative Solutions

• Highlight challenges and effective uses of technology for mental health treatment and promotion (AI tools, social media, telehealth, apps).
• Examine national trends and socio-political issues and their relationship to mental health services on campus (e.g., abortion support access, transgender healthcare).
• Explore strategies to address basic needs scarcity (housing, food, transportation).
• Analyze the interplay between social, environmental, and individual factors contributing to mental health consequences of gun violence, acts of terror, war, natural disasters, famine, and epidemics.
• Explore effective strategies relevant to a range of populations — first-year students, student-athletes, veterans, international and first-generation students, students with families, equity-deserving groups, and survivors of trauma.
• Explore new strategies, programs, and policies to promote student resilience, connection, and belonging.

Sessions should expose peer educators and advisors to emerging issues, evolving trends, and forward-facing challenges, raising awareness and equipping attendees to respond proactively to new developments affecting student wellness and peer-led initiatives.

Current Trends and Emerging Issues

Sessions should expose peer educators and advisors to emerging issues, evolving trends, and forward-facing challenges, raising awareness and equipping attendees to respond proactively to new developments affecting student wellness and peer-led initiatives.

• Identify emerging trends in campus, community, and digital wellness that impact peer education initiatives (e.g., increased cannabis use due to state legalization).
• Explore effective strategies for engaging a broad range of student perspectives within peer education efforts.
• Assess evolving factors influencing peer educator group structure and development, inclusive recruitment, and retention, and discuss adaptable solutions for various campus environments.

Individual Skill Building and Leadership Development

Sessions should equip peer educators and advisors with practical skills to strengthen their impact and confidence — core leadership competencies and effective engagement with key content areas.

• Build practical and interpersonal skills to strengthen a peer educator's or advisor's effectiveness in their role.
• Develop leadership, supervision, and mentorship skills that foster meaningful connection, collaboration, and support.
• Apply evaluation data to strengthen programs, inform planning, and promote student engagement.

Adaptable Solutions and Innovative Approaches

Sessions should highlight creative, student-driven programs and forward-thinking strategies that can be adapted across campuses, leaving attendees with tangible tools, templates, or actionable ideas.

• Identify innovative, promising strategies and current research for prevention, harm reduction, and risk reduction programming.
• Examine how successful peer education initiatives and program structures can be adapted across different campus contexts.
• Demonstrate how peer education groups can foster collaboration across campus entities to promote healthy behaviors and create sustainable change.
• Train student leaders to use creative, solution-focused approaches to address campus challenges.

Personal, Professional, and Community Sustainability and Development

• Explore opportunities to increase professional well-being and prevent employee burnout, addressing impacts such as secondary trauma and moral dilemmas.
• Explore strategies for establishing and maintaining sustainable boundaries that support balance between personal and professional responsibilities.
• Build institutional capacity by securing external funding and aligning prevention and response efforts with institutional priorities and strategic goals.
• Identify ways professionals can recognize their own participation in upholding dominant narratives and work to combat them.

Evidence-Informed Policy and Practice

• Identify evidence-informed approaches to power-based violence prevention and response across disciplines, sectors, and professional roles.
• Explore the strategic use of assessment and data to inform policies, programs, infrastructure, and systems-level change.
• Discuss best practices for sustainable, evidence-informed prevention strategies and improving institutional responses to violence and survivors.
• Review strategies for developing and advocating for comprehensive campus sexual misconduct policies, including responding to evolving legislative changes.
• Identify gaps in existing policy and practice to develop strategies that strengthen institutional effectiveness.
• Identify models of collaborative partnerships utilizing cultural responsiveness and diversity, equity, and inclusion strategies.
• Explore the use of developing technology, such as AI, in the prevention of, response to, and engagement in power-based violence.

Transforming Social Narratives

• Examine and interrupt problematic dominant narratives (racism, sexism, heteronormativity, gender identity, ableism, U.S.-centrism) of power-based violence.
• Promote increased engagement of special populations (e.g., men and male-identified people) in all aspects of power-based violence work.
• Explore ways to increase media literacy and engagement and how this relates to the perpetuation of power-based violence.
• Propose ways to decolonize safety by challenging traditional methods and utilizing indigenous and community-led approaches.
• Explore prevention strategies that address high-risk behaviors and harm doers.

Developing or Expanding Campus and Community Partnerships

• Discuss how various partners (student organizations, FSL, housing, athletics) can work collaboratively to address power-based violence.
• Describe models of collaboration, case studies from integrated systems, and efforts to engage all community members in prevention and response.
• Propose 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 include and extend beyond collaborating with law enforcement.
• Identify ways to include identity-specific resources within prevention and response programming for marginalized communities.
• Identify ways student involvement (student government, athletics, RAs) can contribute to and sustain prevention and intervention.
• Develop cross-campus, local, state, and national relationships to build a network of creative and supportive professionals.

Engagement, Collaboration & Cross-functional Partnerships

• Demonstrate the importance of fostering engagement and collaboration for effective health promotion and well-being initiatives.
• Identify skills and strategies to establish, grow, lead, and maintain cross-functional partnerships for collaborative impact.
• Identify effective communication and advocacy techniques to engage and mobilize stakeholders across departments and disciplines.
• Describe various models of partnership and collaboration advancing flourishing campuses.

Health Promotion for All: Decreasing Barriers in Person, Place, and Planet

• Develop a comprehensive understanding of how health disparities, biases, and systemic inequities manifest in underrepresented and marginalized communities.
• Analyze the impact of social determinants of health disparities in higher education settings and identify strategies to address them.
• Discuss how power differentials operate and are reinforced in the health promotion process at individual, group, community, institutional, and global levels.
• Explore how innovative approaches in health promotion education can reduce systemic inequities across diverse communities.
• Discuss how social, political, and historical movements have shaped health promotion strategies to address systems of power, privilege, and oppression.
• Identify institutional policies and practices that can mitigate health disparities and the adverse impacts of systemic inequity on well-being.
• Equip professionals with knowledge and skills to navigate and respond to challenges across the field, advocating for student and workforce rights and well-being.

Current Trends, Promising Practices, and Emerging Issues

• Identify promising practices that are theoretically grounded, evidence-informed, and interdisciplinary to improve campus well-being.
• Compare mentorship, coaching, and organizational leadership models across institutions and their impact on well-being.
• Promote innovative practices addressing social determinants of health, including health equity and environmental justice.
• Identify and share best practices campuses have used, 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.
• Explore how to demonstrate cultures of care and advocate for student well-being in the current national climate.
• Design opportunities to show that well-being work is diversity work and diversity work is well-being work.
• Identify and apply core ethical principles — transparency, equity, responsibility — to guide the implementation of AI technologies in health promotion spaces.

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.
• Develop skills in telling the stories of campus communities using data and research to build champions, influence decisions, and develop resources.
• Describe the complexity of data and its use in building a salutogenic narrative.
• Identify institutional, local, and national policy changes showing promise in their proposal or implementation stage.

Systems, Sustainability, and Stewardship: Leading the Future of Campus Well-being

• Apply foundational frameworks and principles for health promotion strategies in higher education.
• Describe the progression of health promotion in higher education relative to current industry standards.
• Explore leadership approaches that cultivate community engagement, collaboration, and cross-functional partnership to advance sustainable initiatives.
• Strengthen leadership capacity-building practices that empower and grow new and mid-level professionals.
• Develop marketing and communication strategies to model effective health and well-being initiatives.
• 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.