Needs Assessment Parts 1 & 2 

Dates 

Part 1: February 19, 2020 

Part 2: February 26, 2020 

Description 

Conducting a needs assessment is a crucial element of the Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF) and an integral part of a successful prevention planning process. This two-part webinar series explores Community Needs Assessments in the context of prevention planning, discuss challenges inherent to conducting a community assessment, and strategies for maximizing impact. 

Key Webinar Features 

• Part 1 explores strategies for determining which substance use problems and related behaviors are having the greatest impact on a community, including how to find and use data to identify those risk and protective factors that may be influencing or contributing to these problems, and how to ensure that the data you collect reflects diverse cultural perspectives. 
• Part 2 explores the value of assessing community capacity to assure a good fit between potential strategies and local conditions and how to use tools such as geo-spatial mapping to share your assessment findings. 

Presenters 

Jessica Goldberg – is a training and technical assistance specialist with nearly a decade of supporting prevention efforts at the national, state, regional and local levels, as well as an accomplished designer and deliverer of in-person and virtual trainings that address topics ranging from collaboration across health sectors to identifying and addressing health disparities. Her past experience includes serving as a community health specialist with the Massachusetts state technical assistance system, supporting communities in needs assessment, strategic planning and creating logic models to guide change efforts, and then with the Center for the Application for Prevention Technologies or CAPT, and now with the PTTC, where she works closely with states and community coalitions to adopt and apply data-driven prevention planning processes and implement evidence-based and promising prevention practices. 

Shai Fuxman, EdD – is a senior research scientist at EDC. Shai has extensive experience in social and emotional learning, youth development, school-based trauma-informed care, and substance misuse prevention. He also has expertise in program evaluation, cultural competence, and quantitative and qualitative research. Shai holds an M.Ed. and Ed.D. in Human Development and Psychology from Harvard University. 

Cory Morton – is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Social Work at the University of New Hampshire. His research investigates the community context of substance use—whether structural features of neighborhoods, such as access to substance use services lessen substance related harms. Cory’s role on the PTTC is to coordinate the special focus on geospatial applications, providing webinars and technical assistance on using mapping to determine community need or to evidence change.

Part 1:

Part 2:

Supplemental Materials:

Transcript Part 1

Transcript Part 2

Session Slides Part 1

Session Slides Part 2