WHEEL Council, Inc.
About Us
The WHEEL Council – Wholistic Health, Education, and Empowerment for Life – is a national leader in storytelling for prevention and healing, as well as accelerated, multicultural learning.
Our vision is to create programs that merge traditional cultural knowledge with scientific research to facilitate healthy life choices.
Our mission is to prevent drug and alcohol use and other destructive behaviors in young people by combining storytelling, the arts, and cultural empowerment with scientific research.
The WHEEL Council is a 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organization incorporated in Arizona, with a project site in the Murphy School District in Phoenix, Arizona.
Funders
We have received over 3.5 million dollars in grants from the United States Department of Health and Human Services, Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP), Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Agency (SAMHSA) and have received grants from the Arizona Department of Health, the Margaret T. Morris Foundation, the Yavapai Community Foundation, Arizona Community Foundation, St. Luke’s Health Initiatives, The Virginia G. Piper Charitable Trust, and Social Venture Partners of Arizona.
Outcomes
The WHEEL Council is unique in the non-profit world in that it not only emphasizes excellent culturally competent service, but also strong evaluation with positive health outcomes. In the article, Decreasing at-risk youth’s alcohol and marijuana use. Journal of Primary Prevention, 2003, the WHEEL’S program decreased marijuana and alcohol use to near zero. Further, Multicultural model of HIV prevention for youth, International Journal of Learning, 2005, showed that young people in the program gained prevention knowledge and could stop sexual advances. For the last ten years, the WHEEL Council has shown replicable effects of increasing knowledge of the dangers of drug use and risky sexual behaviors in teens, and increase in decision making skills and the ability to say no when offered drugs.
