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SPF SIG is a national public health initiative to prevent and reduce substance abuse and its consequences, and to build prevention capacity and infrastructure at the state- and community-levels. The SPF model consists of 5 steps: 1) needs assessment, 2) capacity building, 3) strategic planning, 4) implementation of evidence-based prevention programs, policies, and practices, and 5) monitoring and evaluation. The underlying hypothesis is that faithful implementation of the steps will build State and community substance abuse prevention capacity and lead to the selection and implementation of effective and appropriate prevention strategies. This will, in turn, result in reduced consumption levels and substance-related problems in the population.
The 1st paper, from the Vermont state evaluation, describes how decreases in 30-day alcohol use, binge drinking, and marijuana use among high school students were significantly greater in intervention communities that in unfunded communities, with similar (though weaker) patterns for young adults. Post hocanalyses showed that communities that achieved larger decreases in binge drinking among high school students were those that: 1) improved the most in their organizational capacity, and 2) implemented their interventions with high fidelity.
The 2nd paper, from the Colorado state evaluation, documents positive changes in communities, like passage of social host liability ordinances and development of high-functioning community coalitions, yet community impact was not observed in substance use or its consequences. However, follow-up data was limited by the lack of policy support statewide for conducting surveys. The results raise interesting questions for Colorado regarding the timeline needed to measure community level impact and the time needed for local policy-makers to implement changes recommended by national policy frameworks.
The 3rd paper, from the national cross-site evaluation, presents results across states and prevention priorities. Preliminary analyses indicate that most targeting communities experienced favorable changes (i.e., declines from pre-intervention to post-intervention) on most outcomes. The presentation will explore these data more comprehensively through multilevel longitudinal modeling, which will incorporate intervening variables and other state and community characteristics (e.g., demographic characteristics, changes in prevention infrastructure, implementation fidelity at both state- and community levels) in efforts to identify key factors that predict success in effecting community outcomes.
The symposium supports the conference theme of Research, Policy and Practice because of the ubiquitousness of SPF grants (49 States and numerous territories and tribal regions have been funded to date), because all or parts of the SPF model has been institutionalized into many state prevention systems (e.g., block grant funding), and because of its focus on the impact of broad policies – in particular environmental strategies – on behavior.