NASPA Strategies Conferences

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.  

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 substance 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
• Utilize evaluation data to build capacity, inform strategic planning, and promote community engagement

Current Trends and Emerging Issues in an Ever-Changing Environment

• Analyze ongoing data and research surrounding substance misuse or campus violence prevention efforts, especially those addressing use patterns and implications for college students
• Evaluate the scope of alcohol and other drug misuse on campus as well as its relationship to academic attainment, sense of belonging and retention 
• Explore considerations for health equity on prevention efforts
• Amplify the voices and experiences around substance 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

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
• 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 substances and those in recovery communities, using innovative strategies, based on a foundational theory, model, or adaptation

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

Creating Capacity

• Explore new and innovative service models to address growing client waiting lists, increased demand, and limited or reduced provider capacity.
• 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.
• Explore 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 recruiting and retaining mental health staff on college campuses.
• Develop strategies to enhance retention and recruitment of mental health staff on college campuses.

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

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 institutional and other potential barriers and solutions to providing increased mental health services 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, 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 endemic (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.

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.
• Learn specific topical content knowledge and current data that can inform programming and contribute to individual expertise. 
• Reflect on different leadership styles and how that supports and enhances individual and group development.
• Develop leadership, supervision and mentorship skills centering diversity, equity, and inclusion for peer educators and/or advisors.

Adaptable Solutions and Creative Approaches to Student Programming

• Identify innovative and promising approaches for prevention, harm-reduction, and risk-reduction programming.
• Articulate how to support students through engagement using innovative strategies.
• 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 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 that serve to amplify the voices and experiences of historically marginalized populations engaging in peer education work.
• Identify changes and explore solutions in peer education group development, recruitment, retention due to societal, cultural, and political climate.

 for more information about the peer education confrence themes, click here. 

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.
• 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.
• 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 around power-based violence and the impact of those scripts on youth. In the context of media, explore ways to increase media literacy and how this relates to the perpetuation of power-based violence.

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.
• 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, and develop resources.
• 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 and Essential Ecosystems for Health Promotion - Centering Well-being in Person, Place and Planet

• 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.
• 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.