Interventions Implemented By CSAP’s Partnerships for Success Community Subrecipients

The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Center for Substance Abuse Prevention’s (CSAP) flagship substance abuse prevention initiative is the Strategic Prevention Framework Partnerships for Success (SPF-PFS). SPF-PFS addresses underage drinking, prescription drug misuse, and other issues across over 600 communities within grantees in 47 states, 8 territories/jurisdictions, 13 tribal organizations, and the District of Columbia. CSAP encourages SPF PFS grantees to support community subrecipients in “implementing a comprehensive prevention approach, including a mix of evidence- based programs, policies, and/or practices that best addresses the selected prevention priority(ies).” This presentation describes the most common types and combinations of interventions implemented by PFS subrecipient communities.

Project directors in the subrecipient communities described the interventions they implemented on a web-based Community Level Instrument twice each year. This instrument allowed the project directors to categorize their interventions by service type, SAMHSA strategy type, IOM category, ecological intervention target, evidence-base, and population sub-group targets. The analyses focus on intervention implemented by subrecipients in the federal fiscal years of 2015 and 2016.

Results showed that on average community subrecipients implemented 3.9 intervention-service type activities, about 37% of which were information dissemination activities and 26% environmental strategies. About half of the interventions targeted whole communities, with only 18% targeting individual young people and 11% targeting families. Media campaigns are the most often implemented types of interventions. Project directors defined just over half of interventions as evidence-based programs, policies, or practices (EBPs), most because they appeared on a list provided by their state-level grantee or alternatively on a federal registry.

This session presentation will highlight the evidence-base that communities use to select their interventions and where gaps may exist in the research base for interventions that address community needs. This presentation will conclude with a discussion of why PFS communities focus more on community targeted activities, and where gaps in the EBPs available for prescription drug misuse lead community subrecipients to select non-EBP environmental strategies and media campaigns.