Guidance

TASK 2: Select Interventions

When developing a plan to address substance misuse and abuse in your community, it is important to identify and select strategies that have been shown through research to be effective, are a good conceptual fit and practical fit for your community, and are likely to promote sustained change.

Although it is natural to want to jump directly to strategy selection, this step should only occur after your intervening variables have been identified. The intervening variables should drive strategy selection—not vice versa. 

Evidence of Effectiveness

Literature reviews, published studies, unpublished evaluation findings, and other resources can help you identify strategies with the greatest potential to affect the intervening variables you identified as a priority.

For the PFS 2015 initiative, the Bureau of Substance Abuse Services recommends consulting a SAMHSA/CSAP publication, Identifying and Selecting Evidence-Based Interventions for Substance Abuse Prevention, as the basis for determining the extent to which a strategy has suitable evidence of effectiveness.

While there are few published studies demonstrating NMUPD prevention outcomes at the community level, nonetheless, a number of resources can assist prevention practitioners in identifying evidence-based strategies in this area, for example:

For each strategy you consider:

  • Review the research evidence that describes how the strategy is related to your selected intervening variable(s)
  • Based on this evidence, present a rationale describing how the strategy addresses the intervening variable(s)

Conceptual Fit

Think about how relevant the strategy is to your community and how it is logically connected to your intervening variable(s) and desired outcomes. To determine conceptual fit, consider the following questions:

  • Has the strategy been tested with the identified target population? If so, how? If not, how can it be applied to this population?
  • How will implementing this strategy in your local community help you achieve your anticipated outcomes?

Practical Fit

Given your community’s readiness, population, and general local circumstances, how effectively could you implement this strategy? Consider the following:

  • Resources—cost, staffing, access to target population, etc.
  • Organizational or coalition climate—how the strategy fits with existing prevention or reduction efforts, the organization’s willingness to accept new programs, buy-in of key leaders, etc.
  • Community climate—the community’s attitude toward the strategy, buy-in of key leaders, etc.
  • Sustainability—community ownership of the strategy, renewable financial support, community champions, etc.

Selection

Based on your analysis, select a strategy or strategies that you propose to implement to prevent NMUPD among your target population.

If there is not an evidence-based strategy for your target population and the intervening variables you’ve chosen, you may propose another strategy, but you must be able to make a case for it based on available evidence.

Tool
Prevention Planning