Products and Resources Catalog

Prevention Across the Lifespan: Infancy and Early Childhood Additional Resources Responding to COVID-19 What's Happening Around the Region? Epi Corner: Reducing Substance Misuse Risk Factors in Early Childhood  

The Role of Prevention During and Following a Disaster What's Happening Around the Region? Epi Corner: Data Collection Considerations During Disasters, Pandemics, and Other Crises

June Newsletter: The Strategic Prevention Framework Step 4: Implementation The key to positive outcomes in substance misuse prevention is using evidence-based programs and practices that produce the intended results. This is accomplished when prevention practitioners select, plan for, and carefully implement those interventions. Sometimes a practice or program will need to be adapted. This adaptation may be identified early in the planning process or may be discovered later. Monitoring the implementation process is necessary to identify areas of concern. The sooner the need for adaptation is identified, the better your prevention outcomes will be. SAMHSA has identified 5 guidelines to consider when balancing fidelity and adaptation. Retain core components. Evidence-based programs are more likely to be effective when their core components are maintained. Build capacity before changing the program. Rather than change a program to fit local conditions, consider ways to develop resources or to build local readiness so that it can be delivered as it was originally designed. Add rather than subtract. Doing so decreases the likelihood of important program elements (i. e.., those that are critical to program effectiveness) getting lost. Adapt with care. Even when programs and practices are selected with great care, there may be ways to improve their appropriateness for a unique focus population. If adapting, get help. Knowledge experts, such as program developers, can provide information on how a program has been adapted in the past, how well these adaptations have worked, and what core components should be retained to maintain effectiveness.1  

Southeast PTTC May Newsletter 

Electronic newsletter for the Great Lakes ATTC, MHTTC, and PTTC, May 2020 edition

Why is Planning Important? Thoughtful planning that leads to sustainable positive outcomes requires collaboration from diverse community groups and sectors. This should include involvement from members of the focus population who will participate in or receive the intervention. Sometimes community members want to use specific strategies because they are already being used in the community or they are “favorites” even though they don’t specifically address the identified problem. Herein lies the beauty of the planning process. When prevention leaders follow a data-driven planning process with coalition members or other stakeholders, the process itself leads the community toward the selection of effective interventions. Once the planning criteria are established, the value and benefits of the process are easily recognized. Each stakeholder will surely appreciate that their time and energy are being well spent and that everyone is working toward the same goals. Inside this edition, there are additional benefits to consider and share with your stakeholders.

Southeast PTTC April Newsletter

Learn how the stigma of substance misuse disorders impedes prevention efforts: National Institutes of Health, Annals of Internal Medicine: Collision of the COVID-19 and Addiction Epidemics   The New England Journal of Medicine: Stigma and the Toll of Addiction   The New England Journal of Medicine: Stigma Reduction to Combat the Addiction Crisis — Developing an Evidence Base   National Center for Health Statistics: Drug Overdose Deaths in the United States, 1999–2018

April 2020 issue of the Great Lakes Current, with a special focus on responding to COVID-19.  Includes links to resources and information produced by the Great Lakes ATTC, MHTTC, and PTTC, as well as the other TTC programs across the country. 

April Newsletter - Strategic Prevention Framework, Step 2: Capacity Maintaining Community Involvement by Building Capacity A question often asked about coalition building is how to maintain the momentum of a coalition and keep members involved. Program coordinators will often take on the responsibility and the burden of the work of the coalition leadership alone. This approach can lead to a loss of interest from the coalition membership and an exhausted prevention team. If any of this sounds familiar, and you want to turn things around in your community, there is good news! This month we have provided many resources in the newsletter on capacity and leadership building.

Southeast PTTC February Newsletter

Southeast PTTC March Newsletter 

The second edition of our bi-monthly newsletter is available. This month's edition features an update from the director, COVID-19 resources, regionally and nationally developed trainings and tools to support and grow the prevention workforce in New England. 

On February 19th, Dr. Parissa Ballard, Assistant Professor in the Department of Family and Community Medicine at Wake Forest School of Medicine, presented what I thought was a fascinating webinar,  sponsored by our Region IV Prevention Technology Transfer Center.  Her topic:  The Benefits of Engaging Youth in Communities: Insights and Evidence from Developmental Science.  One of the things I noted in my brief introductory remarks to the webinar was that while youth engagement is a mainstay of current prevention efforts, the argument for it usually revolves around the value of this approach for a local coalition’s efforts to achieve a goal, such as passage of a local ordinance (e.g., a social host ordinance), or getting the word out about an important prevention practice (e.g., locking up medications in the home).  Many of us know from experience that youth can garner attention and have a significant voice in these kinds of efforts—such as when a well-organized group of youth come to a city or county council meeting to voice their support for passage of a public health ordinance.  Dr. Ballard presented this argument, but she also discussed why and how youth engagement is associated with benefits for the youth themselves.  For example, Dr. Ballard and her colleagues found in their research that volunteering as a youth is associated with healthier behaviors and mental health as youth age into young adulthood (Ballard, Hoyt, & Pachucki, 2019). For me, one of the most important takeaways from Dr. Ballard’s webinar was that when it comes to youth engagement, one size does not fit all!  The potential benefits for youth, and for coalitions, are likely to be different for very young adolescents (ages 10 to  14) than they are for middle adolescents (ages 15 to 19) and young adults (ages 20 to 24) (see Slides 20-32 of the webinar, (Suleiman, Ballard, Hoyt, & Ozer, 2019).   Click HERE to watch the webinar.   References Ballard, P., Hoyt, L., & Pachucki, M. (2019). Impacts of adolescent and youth adult civic engagement on health and socioeconomic status in adulthood. Child Development, 90(4) 1138-1154. Suleiman, A., Ballard, P., Hoyt, L., & Ozer, E. (2019). Applying a developmental lens to youth-led participatory action research: an examination and integration of existing evidence. Youth & Society, 1-28.  

Quarterly Newsletter - March 2020 - Northwest PTTC   Find out about upcoming events, resources, past and future webinars, and read our Northwest Community In Action article highlighting YouthThink of The Dalles, OR. Read it all here: Quarterly Newsletter - March 2020 - Northwest PTTC

Assessment, The First Step in the Strategic Prevention Framework

Electronic newsletter of the Great Lakes ATTC, MHTTC, and PTTC. 

The March 2020 Dialogue contains articles on: Addiction: The Value of Social Work | Mental Health: Brain Awareness | Prevention: Substance Use Prevention and Preventing Problem Gambling | ORN: Partnering with Schools to Impact Addiction.  Additional sections include upcoming training and webinar events, behavioral health observances, new resources, and Region 3 news. The Dialogue is designed to inform behavioral and mental health professionals of news and upcoming events in the Central East states. This electronic newsletter is disseminated on the first Tuesday of each month. You are encouraged to provide us with any feedback or submit articles and topics for discussion in future issues of the newsletter.  Sign up to receive the Dialogue in your mailbox.         

We're excited to offer the first edition of our bi-monthly newsletter, featuring, regionally and nationally developed trainings and tools to support and grow the prevention workforce in New England. We look forward to highlighting multiple modes of training, initiatives to grow the workforce, and specialty programs and trainings in the area of marijuana risk education and prevention.

Happy New Year from all of us here at Southeast PTTC. The new year is a time for new beginnings. We have an exciting year in store for you, full of webinars, events, and more to help prevention specialists enact real change in their communities. Learn more about our upcoming webinars and how you can become involved in national initiatives in our January newsletter. 

February 2020 issue of the electronic newsletter of the Great Lakes ATTC, MHTTC, and PTTC. 

The February 2020 Dialogue contains articles on: Addiction: Black History Month | Mental Health: Resources to Prepare Educators | Prevention: Substance Use Prevention and Stopping the Spread of HIV/AIDS | ORN: One-year Extension.  Additional sections include upcoming training and webinar events, behavioral health observances, new resources, and Region 3 news. The Dialogue is designed to inform behavioral and mental health professionals of news and upcoming events in the Central East states. This electronic newsletter is disseminated on the first Tuesday of each month. You are encouraged to provide us with any feedback or submit articles and topics for discussion in future issues of the newsletter.  Sign up to receive the Dialogue in your mailbox.         

Strategic Prevention Framework Overview This month as we begin the first of the 2020 Partnerships for Success (PFS) Academy webinar series on the Strategic Prevention Framework, we’ll highlight tools and resources related to working each of these steps as well as integrating sustainability and cultural competency in each step. Dr. Iris Smith has emphasized each area of the SPF and the role of the epidemiologist at each step in the article at the bottom of this newsletter. Research and data findings drive this process, and she demonstrates that close work with your epi and evaluation teams are just as important as developing community partnerships at all levels of the SPF. If you plan to attend the PFS Academy beginning this month, a great resource, to begin with, is - A Guide to SAMHSA’s Strategic Prevention Framework. The principles in this tool outline the webinar series in the PFS Academy. The document provides a deeper look into each step with appendices providing information on topics such as risk and protective factors, the socio-ecological model, and sound data collection and evaluation practices.

January 2020 issue of the Great Lakes Current, the newsletter of the Great Lakes ATTC, MHTTC, and PTTC.