“"It is better to be roughly
right than precisely wrong

- John Maynard Keynes



sustainable culture

The Communities That Care System

There are Five Phases of the process used in the Communities That Care System:

Phase One: Getting Started

Phase One includes a readiness assessment to ensure that the community is ready to start the Communities That Care process, and identification of key individuals and organizations to lead the effort.

Specific tasks of Phase One:

Phase Two: Organizing, Introducing, Involving

Phase Two involves building the coalition of individuals and organizations to involve and building on existing initiatives that address health and safety issues.
Specific tasks of Phase Two:

Phase Three: Developing a Community Profile

Phase Three involves collecting community-specific data and constructing a profile from the data which allows the community to analyze its unique strengths and challenges.
Specific tasks of Phase Three:

Phase Four: Creating a Community Action Plan

Phase Four involves defining clear, measurable desired outcomes using the risk- and protective-factor profile; reviewing tested, effective programs, policies and practices for reducing prioritized risk factors and enhancing prioritized protective factors; and creating action plans for putting new tested, effective programs, policies and practices in place. It also includes developing an evaluation plan for collecting and analyzing data to measure progress toward desired outcomes.

Phase Five: Implement and Evaluate

Phase Five involves forming task forces to put each tested, effective program, policy or practice in place; identifying policy makers, organizations, service providers and practitioners to implement the chosen approaches and training those implementers in the chosen approaches. It also involves building and sustaining collaborative relationships among organizations and other stakeholder groups that implement the chosen approaches and developing information and communication systems to support the collaboration. Communities in this phase are engaged in educating and involving the entire community; evaluating processes and outcomes for participants; evaluating outcomes for targeted population and community, adjusting programming to meet plan goals; and celebrating successes. For more complete information on the Communities That Care system, please visit the National Clearinghouse for Alcohol and Drug Information (NCADI). In particular, the publication entitled "Investing in Your Community’s Youth: An Introduction to the Communities That Care System" is a great place to start!

Strategic Prevention Framework: Overview

Background

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is using the power of prevention to help prevent, delay, and/or reduce disability from chronic disease and illnesses, including substance abuse and mental illnesses, which take a toll on health, education, workplace productivity, community engagement, and overall quality of life. Research has shown that a broad array of evidence-based programs can effectively prevent substance abuse, promote mental health, and prevent related health and social problems by reducing risk factors and increasing protective factors. SAMHSA’s National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices (NREPP) (www.nrepp.samhsa.gov) identifies proven programs that work.

Barriers to Effective Prevention

All too often, individuals, communities, or State and Federal agencies do not translate into action what is known about prevention. The result is increased health care costs, lost education and employment opportunities, disability, and lost lives. Efforts to promote prevention have been hindered, in part, by insufficient collaboration and coordination to accomplish what needs to be done. Separate funding silos and the absence of a common strategic prevention framework have frustrated the kind of cross-program and cross-system approach that health promotion and disease prevention demand.

Strategic Prevention Framework

The Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF) changes SAMHSA’s approach to prevention, and helps move the President’s vision of a Healthier US to State and community-based action. The SPF is built on a community-based risk and protective factors approach to prevention and a series of guiding principles that can be utilized at the federal, State/tribal and community levels.

The SPF requires States and communities to systematically:

  1. Assess their prevention needs based on epidemiological data
  2. Build their prevention capacity
  3. Develop a strategic plan
  4. Implement effective community prevention programs, policies and practices
  5. Evaluate their efforts for outcomes.

Although the direct recipients of SPF State Incentive Grants (SIGs) funds are States and federally recognized tribes and tribal organizations, SAMHSA envisions the SPF SIGs being implemented in partnerships between the States/tribes and communities.

How It Works

SAMHSA has funded 34 States, 5 tribes/tribal organizations, and 3 Territories to adopt and implement the SFP to deliver and sustain effective substance abuse prevention and mental health promotion programs in their communities. These grantees must leverage and coordinate all prevention-related sources of funding, including the 20 percent prevention Substance Abuse Block Grant set-aside and other resources.

More about "Communities That Care"

Communities That Care was developed by Dr. J. David Hawkins and Dr. Richard Catalano of the Social Development Research Group at the University of Washington. The Communities That Care system is a community action model, based on years of research and continuous improvement, that:

  • Takes a systematic approach to community building

  • Focuses both on promoting positive youth development and on preventing problem behaviors

  • Helps communities collect the right data

  • Helps communities prioritize predictors based on the community profile.

  • Matches prioritized predictors to tested, effective programs, policies and practices that have proven their ability to affect these predictors.

  • Helps communities implement and evaluate a community action plan, which increases accountability.

Publications List from "Communities that Care"

 

 

 

 


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