Penobscot Bay Community Health Partnerships

PROGRAM HISTORY

Penobscot Bay Community Health Partnerships (formerly Knox County Community Health Coalition) was founded in 2000 and merged with Penobscot Bay YMCA in 2004. Penobscot Bay Community Health Partnerships (PBCHP) joins with the Y to address youth development, healthy living, and social responsibility, with a primary focus on substance misuse and tobacco use prevention, and recovery support. PBCHP serves Knox and Waldo counties. PBCHP is one of Maine’s first Coalitions funded through the Maine Master Settlement – Maine Tobacco Settlement. We have consistently received grant funding from the Maine CDC since 2001 to provide community education and programs.

OUR WORK TODAY

PBCHP’s 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. For 13 years, PBCHP provided regional nutrition education as part of the SNAP-Ed program, until devastating federal funding cuts in July 2025 eliminated this statewide program. Our current work includes a number of community efforts, such as:

• Tobacco Prevention - Tobacco policy creation for schools, businesses, and organizations, decreasing involuntary exposure to secondhand smoke
• Substance Use Prevention - Prevention education about the impacts of substance use in the form of newsletters, press releases, articles, and print materials.
• Recovery Collaborations - Collaborative efforts with local law enforcement, community-serving organizations, and other coalitions in Knox and Waldo counties to reduce stigma, create a close network of support for individuals in recovery or those seeking harm reduction resources.
• Community Health Education - Providing the community with information on prevention topics 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, and much more. 

GET CONNECTED!

Visit and follow the PBCHP team on Facebook or Instagram to learn more and see regular updates. Please contact our Director of Community Health Promotion, Jamie Lovley, with any questions or to request our support.

• Jamie Lovley, PPS - Director of Community Health Promotion
  207-236-6313 ext. 1 / jlovley@penbayymca.org 
• Judy Bentivegna (she/her), TTS - Tobacco Prevention Educator
  207-236-6313 ext. 3 / jbentivegna@penbayymca.org 
• Heather Devita - Community Navigator
  207‑886‑4340 / hdevita@penbayymca.org

Pictured left to right - Jamie Lovley, Judy Bentivegna, and Heather Devita.