Empowering Community Coalitions to Prevent Substance Abuse

Measuring the Effectiveness of Participatory Methods of Improving Health Outcomes

Issue

Substance abuse exacts a high toll in local communities. Use of alcohol, tobacco and other drugs is frequently linked to injuries, crime and violence, as well as to a variety of chronic diseases. Although substance abuse prevention programs have the ability to improve community health, there are numerous challenges to implementing such programs. These include the knowledge and skills required, the large number of steps that need to be addressed, and the wide variety of contexts in which substance abuse prevention programs need to be implemented.

Response

Researchers from the RAND Corporation in California and the University of South Carolina are engaged in a project to assess the effectiveness of participatory methods designed to assist community coalitions to prevent substance abuse and improve health.

The project will partner researchers with local substance abuse prevention coalitions to test the effectiveness of a participatory method entitled, Getting to Outcomes 2004: Promoting Accountability through Methods and Tools for Planning, and Evaluation. The participatory method is designed to enhance the competencies of local prevention practitioners and empower them to adequately develop and assess their own community-based substance abuse prevention programs. The Getting to Outcomes manual is also available in Spanish.

The specific aims of the project are to:

Empower community-based coalitions to plan, implement and evaluate their own health promotion and disease prevention programs;
Improve the effectiveness of substance abuse prevention programs through the use of the Getting To Outcomes model; and
Identify factors associated with adoption of the Getting To Outcomes model.

A recent review calls Getting to Outcomes 2004 "a fabulous cookbook for someone who's never done [outcomes evaluation] before."

Getting to Outcomes

10 Steps for Achieving Results-Based Accountability

In 2004, the RAND Corporation published Getting To Outcomes™ 2004: Promoting Accountability Through Methods and Tools for Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation, a manual designed to provide guidance to prevention practitioners in agencies, schools, and community coalitions as they plan, implement, and evaluate their own substance abuse prevention programs.