Ledyard — A meeting of the Ledyard Safe Teens Coalition Tuesday brought together the mayor, police chief, medical personnel and social workers to discuss the groundwork for a grant that aims to curb drug use in town.

Members discussed heroin use in the region, as well the connection to prescription opioid use and ways to intervene and educate teenagers who might be at risk for abusing these substances as well as alcohol and marijuana.

The grant, which the coalition received in October 2015, will provide $125,000 in funding annually for five years, with the possible extension to 10, as part of the Substance Abuse Mental Health Services Administration's drug-free communities program.

Locally, New London also received the grant through the New London Community & Campus Coalition.

The Ledyard Safe Teens Coalition was founded in 2007 with a grant aimed at combating alcohol and marijuana use among high school age students.

The coalition continued working after the expiration of that grant until receiving the most recent drug-free communities grant, which will be facilitated by Ledge Light Health District and includes work preventing abuse of prescription drugs.

Kerensa Mansfield, the health program coordinator at Ledge Light Health District, said that the addition of prescription drugs to the mandate of the coalition was due in part to a greater willingness in town to find solutions to prescription drug abuse.

"Now that there have been so many tragic incidents ... it's really important that we all work together and really emphasize the prevention, the treatment and the recovery systems all working together," she said. "We need to be proactive and not reactive."

According to a 2013 survey of Ledyard High School juniors and seniors conducted by the Ledge Light Health District, 6.5 percent of respondents reported using someone else's prescription drugs.

The perceived risk of using prescription drugs was higher than marijuana, but lower than cigarettes, according to Mansfield.

Russell Melmed, an epidemiologist at Ledge Light, presented some preliminary data at Monday's meeting of the 2015 survey of drug use at Ledyard High School.

While it was too early to compare the data to previous years of the survey, he noted that the numbers pointed to the transition into high school as a particularly vulnerable time for students.

The prevalence of students who tried e-cigarettes had also increased.

Melmed said once they are able to analyze the most recent data, they will be able to examine the opportunities the coalition has to intervene and prevent drug abuse.

"The first year is about capacity building, the end of the first year (we'll) know what's going on to prevent those things," Melmed said.

Some of the strategies that the coalition is looking to use include promoting the "Prescription Monitoring Program" that helps doctors identify patients who are looking for specific drug prescriptions and could potentially be addicted, as well as lockboxes where residents can dispose of unused medications.

They will also are looking into advocating an ordinance for local sellers of alcohol to have Training for Intervention Procedures, or TIPS certification.

n.lynch@theday.com

Twitter: @_nathanlynch