NASPA Strategies Conferences

Each proposal will select one theme that most aligns with program content.

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

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
• Explore considerations for health equity on prevention efforts
• Amplify the voices and experiences around substance misuse and campus violence of underrepresented populations

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 sources and repositories for identifying evidence-based programs and strategies
• Explore replicable and adaptable evidence-based policies, programs, and practices
• Identify best practices for campus policies surrounding alcohol and other drugs

Innovative Solutions and Changing Practices

• Evaluate the efficacy and fidelity of prevention strategies led online/virtually
• Identify changes in prevention strategies due to COVID-19 and the long term impact for students and staff
• 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

• Create sustainability into all efforts in the spectrum of prevention and health promotion
• Discuss an understanding of cultural competency and its importance in evidence-based prevention efforts
• Discuss efforts to build capacity to implement prevention strategies on campus

Each proposal will select one theme that most aligns with program content.

Access to Services

•  Explore new and innovative service models to address growing client waiting lists 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

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 misuse, 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

Cultural and Identity Considerations

•  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 research on current and emerging trends in college mental health and its implications for practitioners, administrators, faculty members, and allied professionals in delivering comprehensive services supporting healthy campuses;
• Examine current national trends and socio-political  issues and their relationship to the provision of mental health services on campus;
• 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 re-engagement of students, faculty, staff members, and administrators on campus as the nation emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic.

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, 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 to address the challenges facing campus community members who are supporting students (e.g., mental health providers, student affairs staff, faculty, administrators, etc.) through the COVID-19 pandemic and beyond

Each proposal will select one theme that most aligns with program content. 

Evidence-based Policy and Practice

• Identify evidence-based approaches to sexual violence prevention and response
• Demonstrate strategic use of assessment and data to inform and influence policies, programs, systems, infrastructure, and other higher order change that helps build a culture in which sexual violence is eliminated
• Discuss best practices in: implementing sustainable, evidence-based prevention programs; improving campus response to violence and victims; and evaluating the impact of these efforts
• Describe strategies for developing or revising comprehensive campus sexual misconduct policies, including how they are impacted by the latest federal and state legislative policy changes

Innovative or Promising 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 these initiatives
• Discuss innovative/promising approaches to the prevention of and response to sexual violence in higher education, including discussions of lessons learned, assessment and evaluation, and replicability

Disruption of Dominant Social Narratives

• Examine and interrupt the problematic dominant narratives of sexual violence (e.g. racism, sexism, heteronormativity, gender identity, ableism), including narratives around those who experience sexual violence; those who perpetrate sexual violence; as well the ways in which those who work to prevent and respond to sexual violence participate in these dominant narratives
• Create and propose new perspectives, approaches, and strategies to honor all identities in sexual violence work
• Examine societal and institutional systems and structures that contribute to, are complicit in, or perpetuate violence, and identify practices that foster inclusive and equitable efforts to address sexual violence

Developing or Expanding Campus and Community Partnerships

• Discuss the ways in which diverse stakeholders from within and across the campus and the larger community can work collaboratively to address sexual 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 sexual violence prevention and response
• Describe collaboration with local, state, and national organizations to prevent and respond to campus sexual violence
• Identify strategies to expand and strengthen relationships among and between campuses and community service providers, in an effort to augment support for reporting and responding parties and increase communication around and collaboration in prevention and response

Each proposal will select one theme that most aligns with program content.

Foundations and Essential References in the Field of Health Promotion

• 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
• Apply foundational frameworks and principles for effective health promotion in higher education as a public health setting
• Describe the evolution of health promotion practice in higher education leading to a clear understanding of current industry standards
• Discuss core knowledge and relevant case studies of quality health promotion practice

Research and Data that Informs Our Work

• Discuss implications for health promotion with historically underrepresented populations
• Discover how data is gathered, contextualized, shared and utilized by campus community members for health promotion actions
• Describe the complexity of data and its use in building the narrative of well-being on campus
• Compare and contrast key terminology and the impact of the language we use
• Build sustainable infrastructure and evolving systems to create a culture of well-being

Partnerships and Collaborations to Advance Well-being 

• Discuss through a health equity lens how social, political, and historical movements within public health have shaped and created systems of power, privilege, and oppression
• Discover ways to synergize environmental factors using settings approaches
• Describe how to lead coalition building to collectively strive for a flourishing campus community
• Foster a sustainable infrastructure to impact system change and create a culture of well-being 
• Articulate how to develop and maintain meaningful external and internal partnerships

Leadership Development for Health & Well-being

• Discover leadership and supervision skills that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion
• Compare and contrast leadership models and their impact on well-being
• Describe the characteristics of leadership styles that are effective for non-linear, communal outcomes
• Discuss the role of restorative practice in change management

Promising Practices, Innovations and Emerging Trends

• Discuss innovative practices that are addressing issues of health equity 
• Discuss the practices that campuses have utilized, integrating new guidance from the field, to create healthy and well communities
• Identify promising practices that are theoretically grounded
• Discover policy changes that are showing promise in their proposal or implementation stage
• Describe future trends in systemic well-being on university campuses
• Apply learning from the pandemic response to the future of the field

Successful proposals should include:

• Lengthy description about session content that you will present.
• Relationship of the program to the conference themes outlined on the website.
• Identification of the program format (e.g., lecture, panel, debate) including methods for participant involvement (e.g., discussion, effective practice sharing, case study analysis).
• 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.
• Integration of equity, inclusion, and social justice for identified subpopulations (students of color, LGBTQIA+ students, international students, students with ability differences, undocumented students, etc.) or at a systems level (e.g. colonization, racial oppression and trauma, restrictive statewide policy for trans students' rights, etc.).

Looking for tips on writing an effective general NASPA proposal? See sample submissions and formatting tips in our Program Submission Guidelines.