The Vashon Healthy Community Network, a group working to reduce teen substance abuse on the Island, won a nationwide award in Washington, D.C., last week for the way it has launched its ambitious project.

The Community Anti-Drug Coalition of America, a nonprofit group that provides training to communities that have received a federal grant to reduce teen substance abuse, praised the Vashon project for its wide-ranging community assessment, an effort on organizers’ part to systematically understand the social and environmental conditions leading to the drug and alcohol problems on Vashon.

The national coalition called Vashon’s assessment “a masterpiece.”

“The incredible depth of the detail they included truly reflects an enormous pride and deep understanding of their community’s local conditions,” the coalition said in awarding Vashon the chairman’s award.

Luke McQuillin, project coordinator for the Vashon Healthy Community Net-work and its Drug-Free Communities Coalition, called it “quite an honor” to receive the award. Claudia Gross Shader, who chairs the network, attended the ceremony in the nation’s capital with him.

“They felt our work was very comprehensive,” he said.

Vashon’s network garnered a highly competitive federal grant to address teen substance abuse in September 2009. Since then, it has held two prescription drug “take-back” events, begun an effort to pinpoint hotspots for teen drinking and developed its 33-page community assessment.

Ken Maaz, the executive director of Vashon Youth & Family Services, which is playing a lead role in Vashon’s Healthy Community Network, said Vashon received the award because of the degree to which it’s trying to do what the federal grant asks of it — developing a program that looks at environmental and community-wide interventions rather than programmatic ones.

“It’s a great acknowledgement,” he said. “It’s a great source of encouragement to us.”