Talking about public health can be tricky, because so many of the terms we use sound like jargon. When public health professionals are talking to each other, that may not be a problem; but when we’re trying to explain our work to community members or professionals from other sectors, the words we use might be confusing. Because CHNA 20 is deeply committed to growing collaborative relationships with all members of our communities -- not just the public health experts -- we’ll be periodically sharing simple explanations of complicated-sounding jargon we use when we discuss our work. We hope this will help demystify some of the jargon and make our efforts more understandable and accessible to our communities.
What is the Strategic Prevention Framework?
The Strategic Prevention Framework is a planning tool developed by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA). Designed for use by prevention strategists, the framework provides a comprehensive set of steps and guiding principles for creating effective, sustainable approaches to improving community behavioral health -- specifically in the areas of preventing substance use and misuse.
The idea behind the Strategic Prevention Framework is that individual behavior exists within a community context. In order to effectively help people change their behavior for the better, it’s crucial to understand other things about them: Where they live, what their values and beliefs are, who their support systems are, what other resources are available to them, and so on. Without looking beyond the immediate health challenge, such as substance misuse, it’s difficult to design an effective solution.
To help prevention planners understand the big picture, SAMHSA’s framework includes five steps:
Assessment: What is the problem, according to the available data? What are the prevention needs in this area?
Capacity: What do you have to work with to help you address the needs? What are the local resources available?
Planning: What should you do and how should you do it? What are the best practices for solving the identified needs?
Implementation: What are the action steps to making your plan happen? How will you deliver the evidence-based program you’ve designed?
Evaluation: Is this plan working as intended? Are you meeting the goals you set for the prevention program? What can be changed or improved to make the program more successful?
The Strategic Prevention Framework also contains two guiding principles that planners should consider during each step:
Cultural competence: “The ability of an individual or organization to understand and interact effectively with people who have different values, lifestyles, and traditions based on their distinctive heritage and social relationships.” In other words, planners should always be thinking about the background, relationships, and ingrained beliefs and social norms of the people they serve.
Sustainability: “The process of building an adaptive and effective system that achieves and maintains desired long-term results.” Or, to put it simply, planners should create programs that will continue to help solve problems in a lasting way, not just an immediate one-time intervention.
What might this look like in real life, and how does the Strategic Prevention Framework relate to the Blue Hills Community Health Alliance?
The CHNA has worked within the structure of the Strategic Prevention Framework for many initiatives, so fortunately, we can use the real-world example of one of our own efforts to demonstrate how it works.
Our non-competitive Substance Abuse Coalition Mini Grant program is one example of putting the Strategic Prevention Framework into action. We envisioned the mini grant initiative as a way to support grassroots prevention efforts in CHNA 20 communities, particularly those that were lacking an existing planning process for prevention. In our work to set up the mini grants, we:
Assessed the prevention needs of the communities, using available data such as school-administered Behavioral Risk surveys;
Accounted for capacity in each community by connecting with a broad coalition of local stakeholders, such as police, schools, and community agencies;
Initiated a planning process to develop leadership structures within the communities, facilitate relationship-building across sectors and bring all the identified stakeholders to the table to work look at best practices;
Supported implementation through funding of the mini grants and ongoing technical assistance;
And encouraged evaluation through requiring written feedback on specific metrics and benchmarks to help measure program successes.
Through the work of the Substance Abuse Coalition Mini Grant program, we’ve seen some notable sustainable outcomes in the region. One excellent example is the work done by the Milton Substance Abuse Prevention Coalition (MSAPC).
Their efforts began with our mini grant program and the technical assistance CHNA 20 provided throughout the mini grant initiative. Building on the successes they experienced during that program, MSAPC then envisioned an ambitious expansion that would directly utilize the five steps of the Strategic Prevention Framework to create a long-term local prevention effort. They applied for, and received, a larger CHNA 20 Multi-Year Grant for a 3-year term to help them undertake the expansion effort, including a needs assessment process and capacity building in their community. After that, MSAPC went on to receive a coveted Drug-Free Communities federal grant to support their ongoing work -- a true success story speaking to the strength of the Strategic Prevention Framework as a planning tool, as well as the potential for the CHNA’s seed support (both financial and experiential) to create large-scale sustainable change in our region.