Our History

Penobscot Bay Community Health Partnerships (formerly Knox County Community Health Coalition) was founded in 2000, later merging with Penobscot Bay YMCA in mutual efforts toward community outreach in 2004. Penobscot Bay Community Health Partnerships (PBCHP) serves Knox and Waldo counties to address youth development, healthy living, and social responsibility, with a primary focus on substance misuse and tobacco-use prevention, recovery support, and free nutrition education opportunities & initiatives for SNAP-eligible residents.

Today PBCHP's large focus areas are tobacco use prevention (including vaping), decreasing involuntary exposure to secondhand smoke, substance use prevention, harm reduction, decreasing stigma around substance use disorder, and community & individual nutrition security.

PBCHP's focus areas include:

Tobacco policy creation for schools, businesses, and other organizations throughout the community.

Prevention education about the impacts of substance use in the form of newsletters, press releases, articles, and print materials. Providing information such as safe medication storage and disposal, safe cannabis storage, impaired driving laws, social hosting laws, safe alcohol sales and service, individual and community impacts of vaping, naloxone use and availability, food and kitchen safety, nutrition, grocery budget management, and more.

Recovery community support as well as access to a variety of harm-reduction resources.

Nutrition education for Knox County residents of all ages, offering opportunities to develop skills in shopping, cooking, and eating nutritious foods with limited resources or food accessibility.

Nutrition & wellness-related initiatives to support community health and foster equitable access to food, nutrition, and food assistance resources and programs.

Local collaboration with law enforcement, community-serving organizations, and other community health organizations to create a tight network of support for everyone in our mid-coast community.