Alcohol, Drug Addiction & Mental Health Services Board of Summit County

ODADAS Recognizes Local Prevention Specialist As Innovator of the Year
11/21/2011

The Ohio Department of Alcohol and Drug Addiction Services (ODADAS) presented its annual Community Prevention Awards on November 17th as part of the 23rd Ohio Prevention and Education Conference (OPEC), the largest alcohol and other drug prevention workforce development event of its kind in the state. The awards are given annually to a service provider and an individual who exemplify Ohio’s best in terms of prevention programming, advocacy and leadership.

Prevention Innovator of the Year: Tammy Kline, Ohio Certified Prevention Specialist II, Summit County Public Health

In photo from left to right: ODADAS Director Orman Hall, Tammy Kline, and Karen Kimbrough, ODADAS Prevention Regional Coordinator

Tammy Kline, a Certified Prevention Specialist with Summit County Public Health, is this year’s Prevention Innovator of the Year. Kline has spent the past 20 years working to protect the health of Summit County residents by developing programs and activities that promote health, safety and wellness. Throughout her career, she has shown outstanding leadership, dedication to serving the community and a commitment to advancing prevention science. One of the first prevention professionals in her area to earn the OCPS II credential, Kline is credited with developing a variety of innovative and engaging programs.

Tammy has been with the Akron Health Department, now integrated into Summit County Public Health, since 1994. She has been a leader in initiating, shaping and promoting prevention within her own agency as well as in our local prevention system as a whole. When it was mandated by ODADAS in 2008 that all prevention providers be certified by October 2009, Tammy took the initiative to request the Board’s assistance in developing the necessary training to ensure those prevention providers in our prevention system were properly trained and prepared for certification testing. Tammy helped build the curriculum for the bi-weekly trainings and also taught some of the sessions. As a result of her efforts all of our local prevention providers were able to get prevention staff certified and even some out of county providers participated as well to meet the deadline.

Tammy has been a leader in the field by becoming one of the first OCPS II’s in Summit County in 1998 and by mentoring our other prevention agencies in developing evidence based prevention programming. She has developed innovative prevention programming of her own in an effort to keep up with trends and engagement strategies.

Tammy has a passion for prevention and is always ready and available to help build and increase prevention efforts in our system.We truly appreciate all of her efforts and offer our warmest congratulations for a job well done!