Evaluating Samhsa's Partnerships for Success: Grantees and Subrecipient Communities

Introduction:

The Program Evaluation for Prevention Contract (PEP-C) is conducting the cross site evaluation of the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention’s (CSAP’s) Strategic Prevention Framework Partnerships for Success (SPF-PFS) program.  PFS was developed to reduce underage drinking (ages 12-20) and prescription drug misuse and abuse (ages 12-25).  The program is based on the premise that changes at the community level will, over time, lead to measurable changes at the state, jurisdiction, or tribal level. By working together to foster change, grantees and their PFS funded communities can more effectively begin to overcome the challenges underlying their substance abuse prevention priorities and achieve the goals of the PFS.  This presentation provides an overview of the PFS program and evaluation design and places a special focus on describing the grantees and subrecipient communities participating in the program.

 

Methods:

The PFS Evaluation uses measures at multiple levels and over multiple time points to assess implementation of the program and interventions along with related outcomes.  These measures include: 1) Grantee-level Quarterly Progress Reports on the SPF steps, funding, and health disparities activities; 2) Grantee Project Director Interviews (90 minutes long and occurring at beginning, middle and end of grant); 3) Grantee-Level Instruments (online surveys of grantee project directors at baseline and end of grant); 4) Community-Level Instruments (online surveys that community subrecipients complete twice each year and which collect data about the implementation of interventions); 5) grantee-level outcomes (from the National Survey of Drug Use and Health and administrative data sources); and 6) community-level outcomes (reported yearly by Grantees and originating from state or local survey and administrative sources).

 

Results and Conclusions:

Within the first three cohorts (2012 through 2014), SPF-PFS reached 40 states, 6 U.S. territories, 5 tribal organizations and the District of Columbia at the grantee level, along with approximately 610 subrecipients funded by grantees to implement interventions in their communities.  PFS grantees from the 2012 and 2013 cohorts reported a median annual total of prevention funding of $5.5 million, with a range from $1 million to $28 million and PFS accounting for 30% of that total on average.  Grantees varied widely in the number of subrecipient communities they funded and in their leveraging of non-PFS funds for their PFS activities.  The variety of grantees and subrecipient communities receiving PFS funding allows for a unique look at the large scale implementation of prevention interventions along with related questions of cost effectiveness.