ECPN Student Poster Contestant: RE-AIM Evaluation of Washington State’s Community Prevention and Wellness Initiative for Adolescence Substance Use Prevention

Introduction: Community Prevention and Wellness Initiative (CPWI) is a community coalition model aimed at reducing youth behavioral problems, especially underage drinking. This Washington State Division of Behavioral Health and Recovery (DBHR) initiative began in 2011 and to date there are 5 cohorts with a total of 64 CPWI communities across the state. The RE-AIM framework is one of the most popular evaluation tools used in public health and it emphasizes the evaluation of 5 dimensions of an initiative: Reach, Effectiveness, Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance. In this evaluation, we used the RE-AIM framework to examine the public health impact of 59 CPWI communities from the first four cohorts on 3 dimensions: Adoption, Implementation, and Maintenance. Our goal was to determine the higher (macro) level public health impact of CPWI communities; thus, we aggregated data at the cohort level.

Method: We used DBHR administrative data and CPWI Process Evaluation Survey for the evaluation. DBHR administrative data includes information on all programs implemented by CPWI coalitions from January 2016 to the present. The CPWI Process Evaluation Survey, conducted in 2017, includes data on 46 of 59 communities. We measured Adoption by calculating the proportion of respondents who agreed that their CPWI coalition has collaborative relationships and has support in the community. We measured Implementation by calculating the proportion of evidence-based programs (EBPs) implemented in the communities. We measured Maintenance by calculating the proportion of survey respondents who reported seeking additional non-CPWI funding to implement CPWI activities. Then, we calculated RE-AIM summary scores based on these proportions. For Adoption and Maintenance, Cohorts received a Low score if proportions were less than 40%, Medium score if proportions were between 40% and 69%, and High score if proportions were 70% or higher. For Implementation, Cohorts received a Low score if proportion of EBP was less than 60% (DBHR minimum threshold), Medium score if proportion was between 60% to 79%, and High score if proportion was 80% or higher.

Results: Cohort 1 has High score on Maintenance (80%), and Medium score on Adoption (60%) and Implementation (76%). Cohort 2-4 have High scores on Implementation (C2 84%, C3 82%, C4 86%), and Medium scores on Adoption (C2 63%, C3 47%, C4 65%), and Maintenance (C2 40%, C3 47%, and C4 45%).

Conclusion: Results are very positive for all 4 cohorts. RE-AIM scores range from Medium to High within and across cohorts. These results also show that there is room for improvement, especially in the Maintenance or sustainability of the CWPI model. DBHR and CPWI communities can use these results for program planning and accountability purposes.