Getting To Outcomes: Promoting Accountability Through Methods and Tools for Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation
The primary purpose of this manual is to help communities improve the quality of their programs aimed at preventing or reducing drug use among youth. Funders are increasingly mandating “accountability” for the public or private funds they provide by demanding high-quality outcome data to determine the success of programs. This manual describes a community planning, implementation, and evaluation model—organized as ten accountability questions—to help your agency, school, or community coalition conduct needs assessments, select best practice programs that fit your community, and to effectively plan, implement, and evaluate those programs. With high-quality process and outcome data, your group will be more likely to get long-term funding for these approaches.
Although this manual was originally developed to help communities plan and carry out programs and policies aimed at preventing youth drug use, it may also be useful for prevention efforts targeted at other youth behavior problems such as crime, teen pregnancy, or delinquency.
Alcohol, tobacco and other drugs, especially in youth, exact a high toll in local communities. Such substance use and abuse are linked to increased mortality and morbidity through substance-related violence, accidents, and crime. Substance abuse prevention programs not only improve the behavioral health of communities, but they save $4 to $5 in costs for drug abuse treatment and counseling for every dollar invested. Similarly, tobacco use is the number one cause of preventable death in the United States and is associated with substantial behavioral health costs. However, substance abuse and tobacco use prevention programs need to be implemented with quality in order to reap these benefits.
Local prevention practitioners face several challenges in implementing high-quality prevention programs, including the significant amount of knowledge and skills required, the large number of steps that need to be addressed (e.g., needs assessment, setting of priorities, planning and delivering programs, monitoring, and evaluation), and the wide variety of contexts in which prevention programs need to be implemented. These challenges have resulted in a large gap between the positive outcomes often achieved by prevention science and the lack of these outcomes by prevention practice at the local level. Information dissemination approaches such as the five regional Centers for the Application of Prevention Technology (CAPTs) and Internet resources such as the Decision Support System (http://www.preventiondss.org/) provide valuable information about available evidencebased programs; however, this information is not always integrated at the local level. This lack occurs in part because programs are often designed without consideration to their transportability. Thus, collaboration between the science and practice is needed.
To narrow the science-practice gap, this manual, Getting To Outcomes 2004: Promoting Accountability through Methods and Tools for Planning, Implementation, and Evaluation (GTO-04), presents a ten-step process that enhances practitioners’ prevention skills while empowering them to plan, implement, and evaluate their own programs.
The GTO-04 manual was specifically designed to help any agency, school, or community coalition interested in improving the quality of their programs aimed at preventing or reducing drug and tobacco use among youth. The manual’s text and worksheets—organized as ten accountability questions—address: needs and resources assessment; goals and objectives; choosing best practice programs; ensuring program “fit;” capacity, planning, process, and outcome evaluation; continuous quality improvement, and sustainability. The model presented in this manual is meant to be a best practice process—prescriptive, yet flexible enough to facilitate any prevention program.
Although originally aimed at preventing youth drug and tobacco use, it may also be useful for prevention efforts targeted at other youth behavior problems such as crime, teen pregnancy, or delinquency. In addition, policymakers will also find this manual useful—it is well suited for use as an organizational framework for entire substance abuse prevention systems. This report was sponsored by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Publication of this report was supported by funds from RAND Health, a unit of the RAND Corporation.
