For Nikki Mingola, MS, substance misuse prevention is personal. Growing up, two of her brothers battled substance use disorder, and one of them died from an overdose.
Mingola, who originally was attending CSU to become a teacher, found herself wanting to tackle the more systemic issues or root causes of things such as substance misuse that young people face. In her work with the Prevention Research Center (PRC), Mingola feels that she’s doing just that, but on a broader scale, so that rather than impacting students one-to-one, as a teacher might, she is supporting school facilitators who take action to impact many students year after year. 
Now she and ColoradoSPH CSU Professor Dr. Nate Riggs, PhD, MS, director of the CSU’s PRC, are using opioid settlement dollars paid by pharmaceutical companies, such as Purdue Pharma (manufacturers of opioids such as oxycodone, morphine, buprenorphine, and hydrocodone), to train middle and high school staff to help prevent students from opioid drug misuse.
Riggs and Mingola helped launch the evidence-based Blues Program in early 2024 and supported school counselors and mental health professionals in Larimer County in implementing this program successfully.
These school-based staff work with students to practice coping mechanisms to prevent severe mental health challenges and substance misuse. These evidence-based methods include teaching cognitive restructuring techniques to help reduce negative mood and anxious thoughts.
As new, stronger opioids, such as fentanyl, hit the market, Riggs said it’s important to teach students effective prevention methods to avoid opioid use rather than focus only on treatment, recovery, and law enforcement.
“Colorado must complement these efforts and invest in proven, cost-effective, and sustainable prevention efforts, which, collectively, are the only behavioral health approach that decreases the incidence of new opioid use disorders,” Riggs said. “Prevention is an approach to opioid abatement that addresses the individual, family, and community level predictors of future opioid abuse,” said Nate Riggs.
THE BLUES PROGRAM HAS 3 GOALS:
- Review the existing prevention programs in Larimer County.
- Create a system-wide approach to screen students’ substance abuse and mental health challenges.
- Implement evidence-based prevention programs, which are shown to decrease substance abuse and mental health challenges.
Through the program, which will be implemented in Estes Park, Poudre, and Thompson school districts, facilitators (school counselors, social workers, and other school-based mental health professionals) will work with students to practice coping techniques, such as talk therapy. It also provides students time to connect with their peers and school counselors to address challenges and find ways to deal with those challenges, rather than use substances. Part of the program aims to get students, post-COVID, to connect, in person, with their peers, which Mingola said is an area that was impacted by the pandemic.
“Our students really have this need right now to connect with each other…. The social skills of students at all grades, K-12, are really decreasing and we have the added effect of the enhancement of social media. Students are having a hard time connecting in person,” said Nikki Mingola.
With the end of the Blues Program’s first year, leaders have already seen results. Based on a survey of students in the program, student depression and anxiety decreased, and coping skills and sense of belongingness with their school increased by statistically significant amounts. “The work that we do saves lives,” Riggs said. The hope is to grow the project to more counties and school districts with opioid settlement funding. “We are so lucky to have universities, you know, right here in Colorado who are working on these exciting and important topics. It is absolutely the case that all of those stakeholders need to collaborate together to overcome these difficult problems facing our communities,” said Jennifer Guthals, PhD, Thompson School District director of student success.
Funding for this work was provided by a grant from the Larimer County Opioid Abatement Council. The council oversees the county’s allotment of opioid settlement dollars, which will total more than $740 million nationwide over 18 years. The PRC staff involved in the project are Riggs; PRC division directors Drs. Anne Williford, PhD, and David MacPhee, PhD; and Mingola and Katelyn Dame, both of whom are PRC research associates and project managers.
