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

• 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 modalities addressing growing waiting lists and stagnant or reduced provider capacity
• Discuss administrative successes and barriers to expand student access
• Discover and compare solutions to promote increased access and awareness of mental health services for students

Cross- Campus Collaboration and Coordination

• Discuss models of collaboration, case studies from integrated systems, successful partnerships, and work with student affairs leadership
• Understand collaboration with local, state, and national organizations to promote mental health on campus
• Understand the keys to successful cross-campus collaboration in mental health services
• Explore ways in which mental health intersects with both violence prevention and response and substance misuse on campus to develop and enhance prevention, intervention and response

Cultural and Identity Considerations

• Identify barriers to mental well-being for campus sub-populations, the strategies to address social justice and identity-related stress, providing inclusive services, and the recruitment, hiring, and retention of diverse staff who provide mental health services
• Discuss both the strategic and the practical aspects of these considerations on mental health services and the creation of a mentally healthy campus environment
• Discuss mental health needs of students within a context of power and privilege

Current Trends and Emerging Issues

• Discover new or ongoing data and research surrounding college mental health, and what inferences that has for practitioners and administrators in providing services and planning for a mentally healthier campus
• Discuss issues at a clinical/individual level and a campus/environmental level
• Examine current trends and issues to better evaluate the scope of student mental health on campus

Successful and Innovative Solutions

• Describe specifically transitional student populations’ mental health (e.g. first-year students, veteran students, etc.)
• Engage in conversations about innovative and effective programming to support student mental health
• Discuss implemented strategies, programs, and policies which have been successful - or which are innovative, based on a foundational theory, model, or adaptation

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, intersectional 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

• Identify foundational 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
• 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

Research and Data that Informs Our Work

• Discover how data is gathered, contextualized, 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
• Discuss implications for Health Promotion with Historically Underrepresented Populations
• Building Infrastructure and Evolving Systems to Create a Culture of Well-being

Articulate how to develop and maintain meaningful partnerships

• Discover ways to synergize environmental factors using settings approaches
• Describe how to lead coalition building to collectively strive for a flourishing campus community
• Discuss how social, political, and historical movements within Public Health have shaped and created systems of power, privilege, and oppression
• Identify opportunities to impact system change within an institution

Leadership Development for Health & Well-being

• 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
• Discover leadership and supervision skills that promotes diversity, equity and inclusion

Promising Practices, Innovations and Emerging Trends

• 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
• Discuss innovative practices that are addressing issues of health equity

There are several different session types at the NASPA Strategies Conferences. Consider submitting a proposal to one or more of the following:

• Live general interest sessions - common educational opportunity at the conference. Usually consisting of the presentation of a program, data, research, or theoretical concept. There will be an opportunity for live participant questions and/or brief discussion (16 - 60 minute options).
• Recorded general interest sessions - common educational opportunity at the conference, however, session will be recorded ahead of time and hosted during the conference asynchronously. There will not be an opportunity for live participant questions and/or brief discussions (16 - 45 minute options).
• Live conversational interest sessions - facilitators will provide a brief introduction to a topic (5-10 minutes) and then lead a discussion with several prompting questions. Participants will be encouraged to participate in the discussion live (46 - 90 minute options).
• Recorded poster interest session - appropriate for sharing research or program evaluation. Participants will visually present their data and conduct a brief presentation (10 - 15 minute options).
• Mini-course interest session - participants will be invited to do some pre-work before attending a session (either live or recorded) to further discuss session content. Designed as highly specialized opportunities to discuss a specific topic or program.

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.