SAMHSA Grant Expected to Help At-Risk Students

DaLyah Jones
News Reporter 

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) has awarded the Texas State University Department of Communication Studies with about $900,000 in grant funds.

SAMHSA plans to implement a 3 year initiative titled Sexual Health Assessment and Risk Education. SHARE will be dedicated to teaching at-risk young adults about the correlation of increased substance abuse and sexual health risks, including HIV and Hepatitis awareness.

Grant Senior Coordinator of the PartySafe Initiative, Abbi Mott, says that the SHARE program will be available to all San Marcos citizens, but will concentrate mostly on the LGBTQIA and the veteran population.

Mott also says that in the recent past Texas State received another grant similar to this year’s, emphasizing “Most people know us as Party Safe on campus, but that was a three year grant last year and that was to kind of implement the same programming and the same services based on the Latino population.”

Mott says SHARE will partner with SM Nightlife and other local downtown bars to help spread the initiative to the San Marcos general public.

More information about SHARE can be found at PartySafeTXST.