1. Strategic Plan Consideration
*The Seven Steps to Building a Successful Prevention Program*
Adapted by the Southeast CAPT from the web site of the Western Center for the
Application of Prevention Technologies. http://captus.samhsa.gov/home.cfm
Absolute MUST KNOW for Evidence-Based Prevention!!!
Step 1: Community Readiness
Is your community ready for prevention?
(Assess community readiness)
Step 2: Needs Assessment
What are your community’s greatest needs for prevention?
(Conduct a needs assessment)
Step 3: Prioritizing
Which risk and protective factors are your priorities?
(Translate needs indicator data into risk and protective factors)
Step 4: Resource Assessment
What resources already exist in your community that address the risk and
protective factors that you have prioritized? (Conduct a resource assessment)
Step 5: Targeting Efforts
Where will you target your prevention efforts?
(Select universal, selective, or indicated populations)
Step 6: Best Practices
Which prevention strategies have been shown through research to be effective?
(Select scientifically-defensible best practice to implement)
Step 7: Evaluation
How will you evaluate your prevention program?
(Conduct evaluation planning, implementation, analysis, and use results for
future program planning)
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2. Strategic Plan Consideration
Step 1: Community Readiness
Is your community ready for prevention?
(Assess community readiness)
What is community readiness and why is it important?
Community readiness is the extent to which a community is adequately prepared to
implement a drug abuse prevention program. A community must have the support and
commitment of its members and the needed resources to implement an effective
prevention effort. Because community readiness is a process, factors associated with it
can be objectively assessed and systematically enhanced.
Nine stages of community readiness
Excerpt from Community Readiness for Drug Abuse Prevention: Issues, Tips and Tools,
1997, National Institute of Drug Abuse, p. 13-15
Through extensive research on community development and substance abuse prevention
efforts, Oetting and colleagues (Oetting et al. 1995) have identified nine stages of
readiness through which communities develop: the higher the stage of development, the
greater the degree of readiness. The following are descriptions of the nine stages and the
characteristics of communities at each stage:
Stage 1: Community Tolerance/No Knowledge
Community norms actively tolerate or encourage the behavior, although the behavior
may be expected of one group and not another (e.g., by gender, race, social class, or age).
The behavior, when occurring in the appropriate social context, is viewed as acceptable
or as part of community norm. Those who do not engage in the behavior may be
tolerated, but might be viewed as somewhat deviant.
Stage 2: Denial
There is usually recognition that the behavior is or can be a problem. Community norms
usually would not approve of the behavior, but there is little or no recognition that this
might be a local problem. If there is some idea that it is a problem, there is a feeling that
nothing needs to be done about this locally, or that nothing can be done about it.
Stage 3: Vague Awareness
There is a general belief that there is a local problem and that something ought to be done
about it. Knowledge about local problems tends to be stereotypical and vague, or linked
only to a specific incident or two. There is no immediate motivation to do anything. No
identifiable leadership exists, or leadership lacks energy or motivation.
Stage 4: Preplanning
There is clear recognition that there is a local problem and that something should be done
about it. There is general information about local problems, but ideas about etiology or
risk factors tend to be stereotyped. There are identifiable leaders, and there may be a
committee, but no real planning.
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Stage 5: Preparation
Planning is going on and focuses on practical details. There is general information about
local problems and about the pros and cons of prevention programs, but it may not be
based on formally collected data. Leadership is active and energetic. The program may
have started on a trial basis. Funding is being actively sought or has been committed.
Stage 6: Initiation
Enough information is available to justify a prevention program, but knowledge of risk
factors is likely to be stereotyped. A program has been started and is running, but it is still
on trial. Staff are in training or just finished with training. There may be great enthusiasm
because limitations and problems have not yet been experienced.
Stage 7: Institutionalization/Stabilization
One or two programs are running, supported by administration, and accepted as a routine
and valuable activity. Staff are trained and experienced. There is little perceived need for
change or expansion. Limitations may be known, but there is not much sense that the
limitations suggest a need for change. There may be some form of routine tracking of
prevalence. There is not necessarily permanent funding, but there is established funding
that allows the program the opportunity to implement its action plan.
Stage 8: Confirmation/Expansion
Standard programs are viewed as valuable and authorities support expanding or
improving programs. New programs are being planned or tried out in order to reach more
people, those thought to be more at risk or different demographic groups. Funds for new
programs are being sought or committed. Data are obtained regularly on extent of local
problems and efforts are made to assess risk factors and causes of the problem.
Stage 9: Professionalization
Detailed and sophisticated knowledge of prevalence, risk factors and etiology exists.
Some programs may be aimed at general populations, while others are targeted at specific
risk factors and/or at-risk groups. Highly trained staff are running programs, authorities
are supportive, and community involvement is high. Effective evaluation is used to test
and modify programs.
Oetting and colleagues (Oetting et al. 1995) have found that as communities achieve
successively higher stages, they realize greater improvement in their degree of readiness.
Therefore, to increase a community's readiness for prevention programming and thereby
improve the likelihood that a prevention effort will succeed, it is important to give careful
consideration to these nine stages of community readiness development during the
process of conducting an objective assessment of community readiness.
Oetting, E.R.; Donnermeyer, J.J.; Plested, B.A.; Edwards, R.W.; Kelly, K.; and Beauvais,
F. Assessing community readiness for prevention. International Journal of Addictions,
30(6):659-683, 1995.
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4. Strategic Plan Consideration
For more information and tools on community readiness, the National Institute on Drug
Abuse has available, "Community Readiness for Drug Abuse Prevention: Issues, Tips
and Tools. To obtain a copy, contact National Technical Information Services at (800)
553-6847 (publication number PB# 97-209605). This book is part of a 5 book packet
which costs $83 plus $5 handling.
The links below will help you assess your community's readiness for prevention as well
as provide you with strategies to improve community readiness. (From NIDA's
"Community Readiness for Drug Abuse Prevention: Issues, Tips and Tools (1997).)
Community readiness assessment survey
This survey will assist you in determining where your community is in terms of
readiness for prevention. This survey, developed by Goodman and Wandersman at the
University of South Carolina, uses key leaders to look at three areas: awareness, concern,
and action across community levels. Key leaders respond to questions in these three areas
both on a personal level and a perceptual level of their organization's responses.
Community readiness strategies
Once you have assessed your community's readiness for prevention, you can use
some of these strategies to improve your community's readiness. These strategies are
included in NIDA's "Community Readiness for Drug Abuse Prevention: Issues, Tips and
Tools."
Next step: Needs Assessment
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5. Strategic Plan Consideration
Step 2: Needs Assessment
What are your community’s greatest needs for prevention?
(Conduct a needs assessment)
What is a community assessment (needs assessment)?
A community assessment is a systematic process for examining the current conditions of
a situation (such as substance abuse) and to identify the level of risk and protection in
your community.
Why do we need to complete a community assessment?
• A community assessment will assist you in:
• Creating an objective profile of your community
• Determining the geographic and demographic areas that are at greatest risk
• Ensuring you are putting your time and money where it will have the greatest impact
• Showing policy makers the need for funding your prevention programs
• Identifying research-based strategies to implement in your community
How do we complete a community assessment?
How do we complete a community assessment?
1. Collect data.
2. Analyze the data.
3. Select the priority risk factors (step 3 of the web-site).
1. Collect data.
Data collection is the first phase of conducting a community assessment. At this point,
data needs to be identified and assembled in order to determine how prevalent each risk
factor and protective factor is in your community. It is important that you examine risk
factors because this will tell you which factors are prevalent in your community that are
increasing the risk that your youth will be involved in substance abuse, teenage
pregnancy, youth violence, school drop-out, and delinquency. If you only examine the
prevalence of a particular problem (e.g. the number of kids abusing drugs), you won't
know what you can do to impact and/or prevent the problem. However, if you can figure
out which risk factors (that increase the likelihood of a problem occurring) are prevalent
in your community, then you can identify and implement strategies to reduce those risks
and thus reduce the problem behavior. Similarly, by examining the level of protective
factors that exist in your community, this will tell you how prevalent factors are which
buffer the effects of risk factors.
Two kinds of data can be collected:
Archival data, or data that already exists
Survey data, or data that you create
Archival indicators, data that already exists, have been identified through research to
enable you to determine how prevalent risk factors are in your community. Click here for
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6. Strategic Plan Consideration
a list of validated archival indicators. These are the indicators which have been shown
through research to be good proxy measures for risk factors. We need archival indicators
because we can't go to our local health department and look up the statistics on "family
management problems" because a family management problems statistic does not exist.
Consequently, we must use "proxy" measures to determine how prevalent family
management problems and other risk factors are. Here are some sources of archival data:
National Data:
CSAP's PREVLINE -- Contains links to 20 data sources
Office of National Drug Control Policy -- Lists 25 links to data sets, along with the
sponsoring agency, description of information available, population, geographic areas,
and frequency/year started
National Criminal Justice Reference Service -- Contains links to many sources of
crime statistics, both National and State data
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention -- Contains links to many sources,
including the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System survey
State of the Nation's Cities Report (HUD) -- A database on American cities and
suburbs (includes data on items such as employment, income, land development)
You can also identify the prevalence of risk and protective factors in your community
through surveys. This may be a preferred alternative if little archival indicator data is
available to you. However, surveys can also function as a good supplement to the
archival indicator data you collect. By having both archival and survey data, you can
compare the two to see where differences and similarities lie.
Steps for Collecting Data:
Identify what data is currently available for each risk and protective factor, beginning
with the list of archival indicators.
Determine which factors need additional data. Click here for a worksheet to assist you
in completing this step.
Develop a plan to collect the additional data that is needed. Click here for a worksheet
to assist you.
Collect that additional data.
2. Analyze the Data.
How do we analyze all of the data we have collected?
Once you have collected indicator data, it is time to analyze the data. Your data analysis
will assist you in identifying which risk and protective factors need to be prioritized in
your community action plan, as well as provide justification for grant applications,
support existing policies and programs, and assist you in selecting new prevention
programs to implement.
The following are questions that need to be asked of the data
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What does the raw data tell you? At first glance, what do the data tell you? Do the raw
numbers impress you as being low? Average? High? Any red flags?
How do the data compare to previous years? Is there a trend? By comparing numbers
for previous years, you can begin to get a picture of how the data has been changing over
time. Is it increasing? Decreasing? Staying the same? How have trends changed in
relation to population changes?
How do our data compare with other similar data (national, state, county, etc.)? Are
the trends similar? Are the rates about the same? Are they going up or down?
What can be interpreted from the data? After reviewing the raw data, the data trends,
and the data comparisons (if available), what can you interpret from your analysis? What
is happening? Do you know why it is occurring? What could have caused the trend?
What does the observed level or trend tell you about this risk or protective factor? What
other factors or events could account for the data?
Are there relationships among risk factors that you can identify based on the data you
have? Examine your data across risk factors and across protective factors.
Should you prioritize this risk factor? The more information obtained about the
indicator data, the easier this question will be to answer. See next step.
Next step: Translating Data into Priorities
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8. Strategic Plan Consideration
Step 3: Translating Data into Priorities
Which risk and protective factors are your priorities?
(Translate needs indicator data into risk and protective factors)
(Adapted with permission from Developmental Research and Programs' "Communities
That Care©" Risk Assessment. All rights reserved.)
Once you have completed the collection and analysis of the data collected for your
community assessment, it is time to prioritize which risk and protective factors need to be
addressed in your community. The following questions will assist you in identifying your
priorities:
Looking across the data you have collected, are there risk factors or protective
factors for which you have no data? If so, identify these factors, determine if and
where the appropriate data can be collected, and add this information to your data
analysis to strengthen your overall assessment. Remember, the assessment is the
foundation for your prevention action plan. The more thorough you are in completing this
step, the more effective and accurate you will be in designing solutions.
Which risks are most prevalent in your community? Which protective factors
are most lacking? Based on: trends, comparisons with other similar data (national,
state or other communities); comparisons across factors; and your interpretation of the
data and possible explanations.
At what developmental periods are children most at risk in your community?
Is there an identifiable "cluster" of risk factors that, addressed together, could
provide a synergistic response?
Which two to five risk factors, identified as most prevalent in your community,
do you think your community should tackle first? Which protective factor
should you tackle first?
Next step: Resource Assessment
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9. Strategic Plan Consideration
Step 4: Resource Assessment
What resources already exist in your community that address the risk and
protective factors
that you have prioritized? (Conduct a resource assessment)
What is a resource assessment?
A resource assessment is a systematic process for examining the current resources in your
community which are reducing risk factor and increasing protective factors. It answers
the question: "What's going on in my community?"
What are "resources"? They are anything that can be activated to reduce the likelihood
that individuals or communities will begin or continue to abuse alcohol, tobacco, and
other drugs.
Why do we need to complete a resource assessment?
A resource assessment will assist you in:
Identifying gaps where new services should be implemented
Avoiding duplication in services
Building collaboration among service providers
Modifying existing programs to meet prevention needs
Identifying existing resources to sponsor new programs
Ensuring you are putting your time and money where it will have the greatest impact
Ensuring you are creating a comprehensive prevention strategy for your community
Ensuring you are effectively impacting the priority risk and protective factors that you
identified when completing your community assessment (Steps 2 and 3).
How do we complete a resource assessment?
Before conducting a resource assessment, you must complete a community
assessment and identify priority risk and protective factors (Step 2 and Step 3).
Collect information on existing resources in your community which may be
addressing the priority risk and protective factors that you identified through your
community assessment.
Analyze the resources to determine how effectively they are impacting your priority
risk and protective factors.
Determine where the gaps in services are in your community.
Next step: Targeting Efforts
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10. Strategic Plan Consideration
Step 5: Targeting Efforts
Where will you target your prevention efforts?
(Select universal, selective, or indicated populations)
What is a resource assessment?
Now that you have completed your community assessment, identified priority risk and
protective factors, assessed your community's existing resources, and identified the gaps,
it is time to take one more look at your target population.
Since you know in which area you want to place your time and funding (your priority risk
and protective factors) and you know which gaps you need to fill (from your resource
assessment), you can now identify what type of target population you need to address:
universal, selective, or indicated (click on these words for definitions).
To determine what type of population your program/strategies should reach, answer the
following questions:
Can your priority risk/protective factors and resource gaps be addressed at the
universal level? Or would those risk/protective factors and gaps be better addressed
with selective or indicated populations? For example, if your priority risk factor is family
management problems but you know through your resource assessment that several local
programs already offer parenting classes aimed at the general population, then you may
want to look at implementing a parenting program for selective or indicated populations.
Do you need a program/strategy that impacts the broader community (e.g., a city, a
school), not a particular segment of that community? If so, you may want to
implement a universal program/strategy.
Do you need to implement a program/strategy with greater intensity and duration for a
specific population with identified risks? If so, you may want to choose a selective or
indicated program/strategy to implement.
If you are looking at implementing a selective or indicated program/strategy, do you
have adequate funding? (Many selective and indicated programs/strategies require
more funds than do universal programs/strategies.)
Once you have answered the above questions and have determined what type of
population you will target, make sure you are clear as to: what age group(s) you want
to address; whether you are targeting both genders or just one; in which developmental
stage your target group is; and from which culture your target group is.
Next step: Best Practices
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11. Strategic Plan Consideration
Step 6: Best Practices
Which prevention strategies have been shown through research to be effective?
(Select scientifically-defensible best practice to implement)
What are guiding principles and best practices?
Best practices are those strategies, activities, or approaches which have been shown
through research and evaluation to be effective at preventing and/or delaying substance
abuse.
Guiding principles are recommendations on how to create effective prevention programs.
When a community already has a prevention program or strategy in place, the guiding
principles can be used to gauge the program's potential effectiveness. They can also be
used to design an innovative program/strategy when none of the best practices are
appropriate to the community's needs.
Before you select a best practice or apply the guiding principles, your community must
conduct an assessment (risk assessment) to identify the risk and protective factors that
need to be addressed in your community. Once you have identified which risk and
protective factor(s) to address through your assessment, you can use the links below to
select the best practice(s) and/or guiding principles to address your community's needs.
Definition of "best practice": In this web-site "best practices" are those strategies and
programs which are deemed research-based by scientists and researchers at the National
Institute for Drug Abuse (NIDA), the national Center for Substance Abuse Prevention
(CSAP), National Center for the Advancement of Prevention (NCAP), National Office of
Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) and/or the national Department of
Education (DOE). These are strategies and programs which have been shown through
substantial research and evaluation to be effective at preventing and/or delaying
substance abuse. If you are familiar with the rating scale presented in the document,
"Science-Based Practices in Substance Abuse Prevention: A Guide" prepared by P.J.
Brounstein, J.M. Zweig, and S.E. Gardner, the best practices in this web-site would fall
into the categories of types 3, 4, and 5. Click here for more information on this rate scale.
(PLEASE NOTE: Each best practice has not been labeled either 3, 4, or 5. The authors of
the document did not specificy specific types to specific programs. Therefore, this
information does not exist.)
We have also included a category called "Promising Practices" in areas of the web-site
where there are few programs that have enough outcome data (or that have been
sufficiently evaluated) to be deemed best practices.
Definition of "promising practices": Promising practices are programs and strategies
that have some quantitative data showing positive outcomes in delaying substance abuse
over a period of time, but do not have enough research or replication to support
generalizable outcomes. These practices would fall into the rating scale (mentioned
above) of types 1 and 2.
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12. Strategic Plan Consideration
NOTE: No single best practice will be successful at preventing substance abuse in your
community. To be as comprehensive as possible, best practices addressing prevention
strategies (CSAP strategies) in all areas of your community (family, school, individual,
peer, society/community) should be implemented. Remember: there is no "magic bullet"
in prevention!
Get more information on:
Guiding Principles (Part of Step 4)
Department of Education's Principles of Effectiveness
Best Practices
After you have completed a needs (risk) assessment and have identified the area you need
to address, you can access a list of best practices through the Needs Resources of
Effective Programs:
http://modelprograms.samhsa.gov
Additional Resource Materials
Also try visiting the other CAPT sites for more information. We recommend Central
CAPT's search page on best practices.
https://www.epidcc.samhsa.gov/
Next step: Evaluation
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13. Strategic Plan Consideration
Step 7: Evaluation
How will you evaluate your prevention program?
(Conduct evaluation planning, implementation, analysis, and use results for
future program planning) https://www.epidcc.samhsa.gov/
This site is designed to be a "how-to" guide to planning and implementing an evaluation
of your prevention program. If you start by clicking on Section I of the outline below,
you will be led through the step-by-step process of developing an evaluation. You can
also use the outline to navigate the site and locate specific kinds of evaluation
information. There are 7 major sections.
Within each section you will find worksheets, tools, and examples of how to conduct
user-friendly evaluations of substance abuse prevention programs using the risk and
protective factors model. These worksheets and tools can also be accessed in the last
section of this site: Section X: Evaluation Tools & Measures.
I. What is Evaluation & Why Do It?
II. Using a Logic Model for Evaluation Planning
A. Who should develop the logic model?
B. Benefits of a Logic Model
Logic Model Worksheet
III. How to Build Your Program Logic Model
A. What You Need to Know to Build your Logic Model
1. What risk and protective factors does your program address?
2. What services and activities will your program provide?
3. Who will participate in your program?
4. How will these activities lead to outcomes?
5. What are your program's long and short term goals?
a. What immediate changes are expected?
b. What changes would your program ultimately like to create?
B. Reviewing your Logic model
IV. How to Plan Your Evaluation
A. General Considerations
B. Developing the Plan
1. What are you going to evaluate?
2. What do you want to know about the program?
a. Defining the purpose of the evaluation
b. Defining the users of the evaluation
c. Defining the evaluation questions
3. Focusing the Evaluation
a. Timing and program development
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b. Scope of the program
c. Pragmatic considerations
V. Evaluating Your Program Using the Logic Model
A. General Issues in Evaluation Methods
1. Types of information
2. Quantitative and Qualitative information
3. Identifiying measureable indicators
4. Making decisions about methods
B. Evaluating Issue Focus
C. Evaluating Program Activities and Outputs
D. Evaluating Coverage
E. Evaluating Program Assumptions
F. Evaluating Outcomes
1. Some common methods
a. Post-test only
b. Post-test with a comparison group
c. Pre-Post
d. Pre-Post with comparison group
2. Distinctions between long and short term outcomes
3. Measuring Client Satisfaction
VI. Analyzing, Using & Interpreting Evaluation Information
A. Basic Aggregation and Analysis Strategies
B. Descriptive Information
C. Testing for Changes Pre-Post
D. Using and Interpreting Information
1. How will the information be interpreted-by whom?
2. How will the evaluation be communicated and shared?
VII. Implementing the Evaluation
A. Who's responsible for the evaluation
B. How to know if you need an Evaluation Consultant or Contractor
C. Finding and selecting a good consultant
VIII. Glossary
http://captus.samhsa.gov/national/resources/resources.cfm
IX. Links to evaluation resources
http://captus.samhsa.gov/home.cfm
X. Evaluation Tools & Measures
https://www.epidcc.samhsa.gov/
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15. Strategic Plan Consideration
A. Logic Model Worksheet
B. Hypothetical Logic Models from CSAP Best Practices
C. Developing Questionnaires
D. Developing Behavioral Surveys
E. Interviewing
F. Using Tests and Assessments
G. Using Observational Data
H. Conducting Focus Groups
I. Using Case Studies
J. Using Program Records
K. Using Community Archival and Indicator Data
L. Measuring Goal Importance
M. Measuring Client Satisfaction
N. Instruments for Risk and Protective Factors
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16. Strategic Plan Consideration
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