The SPF SIG program is a major CSAP/SAMHSA infrastructure grant program that supports activities to help states, jurisdictions, and Native American tribal organizations build foundations for delivering and sustaining effective substance abuse prevention services. CSAP funded two cross‑site evaluations of the program, one focusing on Cohorts I and II and the other on Cohorts III, IV, and V. Collectively, these evaluations studied implementation of SPF process and whether the SPF process contributed to improvements in outcomes.
METHODS:
The evaluation team implemented a quasi-experimental, multilevel evaluation design that included data collection at grantee, and community levels. The evaluation used quantitative and qualitative data to evaluate both processes and outcomes. Standardized data collection protocols were used to encourage subrecipient communities to consistently report epidemiological data related to targeted community‑level consumption patterns and consequent outcomes. In contrast to the Cohorts I and II evaluation design, a key feature of the Cohorts III, IV, and V evaluation design is a reliance on longitudinal comparisons among funded grantees and communities to assess the impacts of the SPF on outcomes.
RESULTS:
Grantees showed notable improvements across all cohorts on outcome measures, the most notable improvement was in alcohol and drug-related arrests in which 60 percent of grantees showed significant improvement. Eighty-one percent of communities with available community outcome data showed improvement on consumption measures; 47 percent experienced statistically significant improvement. Another highlights of findings was that, among communities targeting underage alcohol use, 90 percent showed a decrease in past 30-day youth alcohol use; 61 percent reported a statistically significant decrease.
CONCLUSIONS:
The cross-site evaluation findings continue to support the value of the SPF SIG model as demonstrated in the earlier evaluation of Cohorts I and II. Some implications of the evaluation findings include:
- The importance of guidance for strategic planning that emphasizes the value of identifying and addressing contextual barriers to the development of prevention infrastructure or community interventions.
The changes in grantee and community outcomes over time were generally positive and consistent with the changes observed in the evaluation of Cohorts I and II, which included comparisons with non-grantee communities. But the grantees in the later cohorts were not asked to provide comparison group data for unfunded communities or individuals, so the observed improvements should be interpreted with caution as indicators of impact.
Communities should be encouraged to continue to implement interventions that focus on the perception of risk associated with substances, in light of declines in the perception of risk or harm from marijuana that reflect trends observed at the national level.