Session: Improving Community Level Impact in Preventing Drug Abuse and Mental Disorders at SAMHSA: Strategies for Evaluating and Improving Implementation (Society for Prevention Research 24th Annual Meeting)

SAMHSA’s mission is to improve the behavioral health of Americans, and its first strategy is prevention.  In this symposium we first present findings from recent evaluations of two of SAMHSA’s prevention programs to states: the Strategic Prevention Framework State Incentive (SPF-SIG) grant, and the Garett Lee Smith Suicide Prevention Grants to States.  Both of these evaluations show the value of using nonrandomized studies to examine impact on communities of these major programs as they are rolled out nationally.  We then present a discussion of plans for examining prevention programs for communities, including the STOP-Act and Prevention Practices in Schools, a roll-out of the Good Behavior Game.  For all four programs we discuss the role of an innovative partnership between SAMHSA and the Center for Prevention Implementation Methodology, a research partner funded through a center from the National Institute on Drug Abuse, that collaborates on predicting and improving the sustainment of these programs after federal funding has ended.  We provide a framework on how such partnerships can themselves by created and sustained.   In this symposium we include presentations by leaders from prevention programs at SAMHSA’s Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) and the Center for Mental Health Services (CMHS) as well as Ce-PIM. These presentations focus on unique opportunities to evaluate these programs as they are being implemented through federal funds.  Findings from a set of evaluations involving all four programs are discussed.  The last presentation describes the partnership that SAMHSA and Ce-PIM have developed and how it can be applicable to other service-research partnerships.