Prevention Institute has developed a broad range of practical, easy-to-use tools that guide practitioners, advocates, and policymakers in planning health strategies and in contributing to safer, healthier, and more equitable communities.
➤ Building Cross-sector Collaboration
This includes the following tools: Developing Effective Coalitions: An 8-Step Guide, Tension of Turf, Collaboration Multiplier, and Collaboration Assessment Tool.
➤ Developing Effective Coalitions: An 8-step Guide
This step-by-step guide to coalition building helps partnerships launch successfully. It supports advocates and practitioners in every aspect of the process, from determining the appropriateness of a coalition to selecting members, defining key elements, maintaining vitality, and conducting ongoing evaluations.
Collaboration Multiplier is an interactive framework and tool for analyzing collaborative efforts. It is designed to guide an organization to a better understanding of which partners it needs and how to engage them, or to facilitate organizations that already work together in identifying activities to achieve a common goal, identify missing sectors that can contribute to a solution, delineate partner perspectives and contributions, and leverage expertise and resources.
➤ Collaboration Math: Enhancing the Effectiveness of Multidisciplinary Collaboration
Collaboration Math helps organizations from diverse disciplines work together. It enables them to better understand each other's perspectives and to identify both strengths and gaps in their partnership.
➤ CADCA: Building drug-free communities
Since 1992, Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) has been training local grassroots groups, known as community anti-drug coalitions, in effective community problem-solving strategies, teaching them how to assess their local substance abuse-related problems and develop a comprehensive plan to address them. Today, CADCA is the nation’s leading drug abuse prevention organization, representing the interests of more than 5,000 community anti-drug coalitions in the country.
➤ Building Coalitions Fact Sheet Index
Ohio State University Extension
This series of fact sheets, compiled by the Ohio Center for Action on Coalitions, addresses the factors involved in coalition building.
➤ Partnership Self-Assessment Tool
Center for the Advancement of Collaborative Strategies in Health
This tool was designed to help partnerships understand how collaboration works and what it means to create a successful collaborative process, assess how well their collaborative process is working, and identify specific areas they can focus on to make their collaborative process work better.
➤ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (Click here for SAMHSA Store)
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) was established in 1992 and directed by Congress to target substance abuse and mental health services to the people most in need, and to translate research in these areas more effectively and more rapidly into the general health care system. SAMHSA has many cultural resources, which are searchable on the main site and in the SAMHSA store, including:
➤ Drug Abuse Among Hispanics, A Brief Evidence-Based Guide for Providers
This Guide summarizes findings from studies about illegal drug use among Hispanics or Latinos. It covers the effects of drugs on the brain and adolescent development, drug abuse prevention for Hispanic or Latino teens, and drug abuse treatment for Hispanics or Latinos.
➤ Culture Card: A Guide to Build Cultural Awareness: American Indian and Alaska Native
This Guide is intended to enhance cultural competence when serving American Indian and Alaska Native communities. It covers regional differences, cultural customs, spirituality, communications styles, the role of veterans and the elderly, and health disparities, such as suicide.
➤ National Network to Eliminate Disparities in Behavioral Health (NNED)
The mission of NNED is to build a national network of racial, ethnic, cultural and sexual minority organizations and communities to promote policies, practices, standards and research to eliminate behavioral health disparities. The NNED site has a resource section that includes such links as Healthy People 2010 and Georgetown University Maternal and Child Health Library, which includes:
➤ A Guide to Choosing and Adapting Culturally and Linguistically Competent Health Promotion Materials
The purpose of this document is to provide guidance on how to assure that health promotion materials reflect the principles and practices of cultural and linguistic competence.
➤ Cultural Competence Health Practitioner Assessment
This assessment is intended to support the Bureau of Primary Health Care, and its funded programs, to enhance the delivery of high quality services to culturally and linguistically diverse individuals and underserved communities. It is also intended to promote cultural and linguistic competence as essential approaches for practitioners in the elimination of health disparities among racial and ethnic groups.
➤ Office of Minority Health
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
The Office of Minority Health was created in 1986 and is dedicated to improving the health of racial and ethnic minority populations through the development of health policies and programs that will help eliminate health disparities.
➤ Cultural Competence in a Multi-Cultural World
The Community Toolbox, Work Group for Community Health and Development at the University of Kansas
This website defines culture and explains why understanding culture is important to community collaborative groups. There is information about how to become aware of your own culture, build relationships with different cultures, become allies to people discriminated against, overcome internalized oppression, and build multicultural organizations and coalitions, among other topics.
➤ Unnatural Causes: Is Inequality Making Us Sick? (Television documentary)
This four-hour documentary series crisscrosses the nation uncovering new findings that suggest that the social circumstances in which we are born, live, and work can actually “get under our skin and disrupt our physiology as much as germs and viruses”.
➤ National Congress of American Indians
The National Congress of American Indians, founded in 1944, is the oldest, largest and most representative American Indian and Alaska Native organization. It serves the broad interests of tribal governments and communities. An important part of its mission is to improve the quality of life for Native communities and people.
➤ Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services
SAMHSA was established in 1992 and directed by Congress to target effectively substance abuse and mental health services to the people most in need, and to translate research in these areas more effectively and more rapidly into the general health care system. To accomplish its work, SAMHSA administers a combination of competitive, formula, and block grant programs and data collection activities.
The SAMHSA Strategic Plan FY2019-FY2023 provides a roadmap to carry out the vision and mission of SAMHSA over the next four years.
➤ Leading Change: A Plan for SAMHSA’s Roles and Actions 2011-2014
SAMHSA introduces eight new Strategic Initiatives that will guide its work from 2011 through 2014 to help people with mental and substance use disorders and their families to build strong communities, prevent behavioral health problems, and promote better health for all Americans.
➤ Strategic Prevention Framework
The Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF) uses a five-step process known to promote youth development, reduce risk-taking behaviors, build assets and resilience, and prevent problem behaviors across the life span. 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.
➤ IC&RC
IC&RC is the largest credentialing organization in the field, setting international standards for competency-based certification programs through testing and credentialing of addiction professionals. IC&RC’s credentials include Alcohol and Drug Counselor (ADC), Advanced Alcohol and Drug Counselor (AADC), Clinical Supervisor (CS), Prevention Specialist (PS), Certified Criminal Justice Addictions Professional (CCJP), Certified Co-Occurring Disorders Professional (CCDP), and Certified Co-Occurring Disorders Professional Diplomate (CCDPD).
➤ National Prevention Strategy: America’s Plan for Better Health and Wellness
The National Prevention Strategy encourages partnerships among federal, state, tribal, local, and territorial governments; business, industry, and other private sector partners; philanthropic organizations; community and faith-based organizations; and everyday Americans. These partnerships will improve America’s health by helping to create healthy and safe communities, expand clinical and community-based preventive services, empower people to make healthy choices, and eliminate health disparities.
➤ Preventing Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders Among Young People: Progress and Possibilities
National Research Council and Institute of Medicine, March 2009
Prevention practices have emerged in a variety of settings, including programs for selected at-risk populations (such as children and youth in the child welfare system), school-based interventions, interventions in primary care settings, and community services designed to address a broad array of mental health needs and populations. This report updates a 1994 Institute of Medicine book, Reducing Risks for Mental Disorders, focusing special attention on the research base and program experience with younger populations that have emerged since that time.
➤ Report Brief: A Focus on Costs and Benefits
This report brief describes the costs associated with mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders that affect large numbers of young people. The report covers costs incurred by family members, the community, and multiple service sectors; the benefits and costs of prevention; and policy implications.
➤ A Public Health Approach to Children's Mental Health: A Conceptual Framework
Georgetown University Center for Child and Human Development, National Technical Assistance Center for Children’s Mental Health, 2009
This monograph advances an approach to children’s mental health that applies public health concepts to efforts that support children’s mental health and development. The approach is presented in a conceptual framework comprised of four major elements: values that underlie the entire effort, guiding principles that steer the work, a process that consists of three core public health action steps/functions, and a new model of intervening that provides the range of intervention activities required to implement a comprehensive approach.
➤ The Determinants of Health
World Health Organization
This report assesses the determinants of health, which include social and economic environment, physical environment, and a person’s individual characteristics and behaviors, among many others.
➤ Preventing Youth Marijuana Use: Data Resources
Education Development Center
This decision-support tool offers a comprehensive listing of available data resources and surveys developed by and for a range of federal agencies and that collect data on marijuana use and its consequences.
➤ Preventing Youth Marijuana Use: Programs and Strategies
Education Development Center
This decision-support tool presents detailed descriptions of substance misuse prevention strategies and associated interventions that have been evaluated to determine their effects on youth marijuana use.
➤ Preventing Youth Marijuana Use: Factors Associated with Use
Education Development Center
This decision-support tool offers a summary of research findings on risk and protective factors associated with youth marijuana use.
➤ What Works Clearinghouse
Institute of Education Sciences (IES), National Center for Education Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE)
➤ Model Programs Guide
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
This searchable database from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention contains information about evidence-based juvenile justice and youth prevention, intervention, and reentry programs.
➤ Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development
Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado Boulder
This searchable database offers information about evidence-based positive youth development programs, including those to prevent substance use and misuse and to promote positive relationships and academic achievement.
➤ The Coalition Impact: Environmental Prevention Strategies
Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA), National Community Anti-Drug Coalition Institute
This publication provides an overview of the environmental strategies approach to community problem solving and includes examples of efforts where environmental strategies aimed at preventing and reducing community problems related to alcohol and other drugs were implemented.
➤ California Evidence-based Clearinghouse for Child Welfare (CEBC)
California Department of Social Services’ (CDSS’) Office of Child Abuse Prevention
The CEBC helps to identify and disseminate information regarding evidence-based practices relevant to child welfare. The CEBC Program Registry provides information on both evidence-based and non-evidence-based child welfare related practices to statewide agencies, counties, public and private organizations, and individuals.
➤ SAMHSA’s Evidence-Based Practices Resource Center
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
This resource provides communities, clinicians, policy-makers and others with the information and tools to incorporate evidence-based practices into their communities or clinical settings.
➤ CASEL Program Guide
Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning (CASEL)
This guide is designed to help educators and school administrators select an evidence-based SEL program that best meets the needs of their community.
➤ SAMHSA’s Suicide Prevention Research Center (SPRC)
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
The SPRC provides a virtual learning lab designed to help state- and community-level partnerships build and improve more effective prevention efforts.
➤ Youth.gov
Interagency Working Group on Youth Programs (IWGYP)
This website includes a searchable program directory of evidence-based programs to address delinquency and other problem behaviors in young people as well as the Evidence-Based Program Directories, a set of links to other federal resources.
This site seeks to identify those social programs shown in rigorous studies to produce sizable, sustained benefits to participants and/or society, so that they can be deployed to help solve social problems.
➤ CrimeSolutions.gov
National Institute of Justice
This searchable database from the National Institute of Justice offers information about the strength of evidence supporting the effectiveness of programs and practices in such areas as substance abuse, juvenile delinquency, and crime prevention.
➤ Evidence-Based Practices & Programs
National Institutes of Health, Office of Disease Prevention
This section of the National Institutes of Health’s website includes information from federal agencies, nonprofit organizations, and private-sector organizations on evidence-based public health services, programs, and practices.
➤ The Community Guide
Community Preventative Services Task Force (CPSTF)
This online guide includes evidence-based findings and recommendations of the Community Preventive Services Task Force—an independent group established in 1996 by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services comprising public health and prevention experts appointed by the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
➤ Risk and Protective Factors for Mental Emotional and Behavioral Disorders Across the Life Cycle
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
This matrix lists the risk and protective factors for mental, emotional, and behavioral disorders during infancy and early childhood, middle childhood, adolescence, and early adulthood.
➤ Get Connected Toolkit
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
Alcohol and medication misuse and mental health problems can be significant issues for older adults. This toolkit, created for organizations that provide services to older adults, includes a curriculum for staff as well as fact sheets. Several of the fact sheets provide information on risk and protective factors for substance abuse, medication misuse, and mental health problems among older adults.
➤ Preventing Drug Abuse among Children and Adolescents: Risk Factors and Protective Factors
National Institute on Drug Abuse
This webpage describes risk factors for drug abuse, including early signs of risk that may predict later drug abuse, highest risk periods for drug abuse among youth, and when and how drug abuse starts and progresses.
➤ Strategic Prevention Framework Components
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
This guide describes the five steps of the Strategic Prevention Framework: Assessment, Capacity, Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation.
➤ Communities that Care
Social Development Research Group
This coalition-based community prevention operating system uses a public health approach to prevent youth problem behaviors including underage drinking, tobacco use, violence, delinquency, school dropout and substance abuse.
➤ Substance Abuse & Mental Health Data Archive
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
This Archive has primary responsibility for the collection, analysis, and dissemination of behavioral health data.
➤ Bureau of Justice Statistics
Office of Justice Programs
The Bureau’s mission is to collect, analyze, publish, and disseminate information on crime, criminal offenders, victims of crime, and the operation of justice systems at all levels of government.
➤ Alcohol-related Disease Impact (ARDI) software
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
ARDI software was developed to assist professionals in state and local public health departments to estimate the impact of alcohol-related deaths and years of potential life lost.
➤ Health Data Tools and Statistics
Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce
Partners in Information Access for the Public Health Workforce is a collaboration of U.S. government agencies, public health organizations, and health sciences libraries which provides timely, convenient access to selected public health resources on the Internet. This page lists links for county and local, state, national, and global health data; statistical reports; demographic data; geographic information systems; training and education; health information technology and standards; and tools for data collection and planning.
➤ Logic Model Development Guide
W.K. Kellogg Foundation
This Guide is a companion publication to the Evaluation Handbook and focuses on the development and use of the program logic model. It provides an orientation to the underlying principles and language of the program logic model so it can be effectively used in program planning, implementation, and dissemination of results.
➤ Capacity Primer: Building Membership, Structure and Leadership
Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America, National Community Anti-Drug Coalition Institute. Primer Series, 2010
This primer provides clear guidelines to help your coalition build the capacity needed to develop and carry out a comprehensive community plan to reduce substance abuse rates. It describes the components of a coherent plan related to your coalition’s strategies and priorities for capacity building.
➤ Encouraging Involvement in Community Work
The Community Tool Box, Work Group for Community Health and Development, University of Kansas
This section of the Community Tool Box describes how to develop a plan for increasing participation in community action, how to promote participation among diverse groups, methods of contacting potential participants, how to write letters to potential participants, how to make personal contact with potential participants, how to involve key influentials in the initiative, how to involve people most affected by the problem, and how to identify and analyze stakeholders and their interests.
➤ Selecting Best-fit Programs and Practices: Guidance for Substance Misuse Prevention Practitioners
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2009
This guidance document describes the Strategic Prevention Framework and promotes implementation of evidence-based practices for prevention in communities across the country.
➤ Finding the Balance: Program Fidelity and Adaptation in Substance Abuse Prevention
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration, 2002
This executive summary describes Dr. Thomas E. Backer’s main conclusions and recommendations from his thorough review of research studies on fidelity and adaptation.
➤ SAMHSA’s Evidence-based Practices Resource Center
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
This searchable online registry provides communities, clinicians, policy-makers and others with the information and tools to incorporate evidence-based practices into their communities or clinical settings.
➤ Guide to Community Prevention Services
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
This Guide is a free resource to help with the selection of programs and policies that improve health and prevent disease in communities.
➤ OJJDP Model Programs Guide
Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention
This Guide is designed to assist practitioners and communities in implementing evidence- based prevention and intervention programs that can make a difference in the lives of children and communities.
➤ Exemplary and Promising Safe, Disciplined, and Drug-Free Schools Program
U.S. Department of Education
This webpage describes the Safe, Disciplined, and Drug-Free Schools Expert Panel, whose purpose is to oversee a process for identifying and designating promising and exemplary school-based programs that promote safe, disciplined, and drug-free schools.
➤ Program Evaluation for Public Health Programs: A Self-Study Guide
Center for Disease Control and Prevention
This document provides a list of terms and definitions related to research and evaluation.
➤ Framework for Program Evaluation
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
A practical, non-prescriptive tool, the evaluation framework summarizes and organizes the steps and standards for effective program evaluation.
➤ Introduction to Evaluation
The Community Tool Box, Work Group for Community Health and Development, University of Kansas
The Community Tool Box is a global resource for free information on essential skills for building healthy communities.
➤ The Evaluation Center
Western Michigan University
The Evaluation Center’s mission is to advance the theory, practice, and utilization of evaluation. The Center’s principal activities are research, education, service, dissemination, and national and international leadership in evaluation.
➤ Evaluation Toolkit
W. K. Kellogg Foundation
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation supports children, families, and communities as they strengthen and create conditions that propel vulnerable children to achieve success as individuals and as contributors to the larger community and society.
➤ Getting to outcomes: Improving community-based substance-use prevention
RAND Corporation
A team led by RAND researchers created this science-based model and support tools to help local groups develop or improve substance use prevention programs.
➤ Sustaining Grassroots Community-based Programs: A Toolkit for Community- and Faith-based Service Providers
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
This toolkit contains six books to help grassroots organizations and faith-based organizations develop substance abuse and mental health treatment services. It addresses organizational assessment, marketing, financial management, sustainability and funding, and evaluation.
➤ Developing a Conceptual Framework to Assess the Sustainability of Community Coalitions Post-Federal Funding
NORC at the University of Chicago
This literature review identifies how researchers, policymakers, and practitioners have defined and measured sustainability for community coalitions. It explores the constructs of community coalitions, their impacts, and sustainability, and includes a conceptual framework that can be used to assess the sustainability of community coalitions.
➤ Building capacity and sustainable prevention innovations: a sustainability planning model
Knowlton Johnson, Carol Hays, Hayden Center, Charlotte Daley, 2004
This article presents an informed definition of sustainability and an associated planning
model for sustaining innovations (pertinent to both infrastructure and interventions) within organizational, community, and state systems.
➤ Sustainability of Prevention
John D. Swisher, 2000
This paper outlines the guidelines for sustaining prevention and makes suggestions for moving to greater levels of permanence for prevention.
