Resources

Resource Library

Search our resource library to access a wealth of information to support your substance misuse prevention efforts. Use the drop down menus to search by resource type and/or prevention topic, or type a keyword into the search bar. New resources added regularly!

Resource Title Description Resource Type
Increasing Participation and Membership

This toolkit provides guidance for increasing participation and engaging stakeholders in change efforts.

Tool
Injury Management: A Key Component of Prescription Opioid Misuse Prevention Fact Sheet

Recent legislation in Massachusetts requires that parents of middle and high school athletes and other adults such as coaches, athletic directors, athletic trainers, and school nurses receive educational materials on the potential dangers of opioid use and misuse. The educational materials shall also be distributed in written form to all students participating in an extracurricular athletic activity prior to the commencement of their athletic seasons.

The Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH), Massachusetts Interscholastic Athletic Association (MIAA) and Massachusetts Technical Assistance Partnership for Prevention (MassTAPP) collaborated to provide action steps to help prevent opioid misuse and overdose among student athletes. This fact sheet also highlight resources for addressing possible alcohol or opioid misuse or addiction.

Fact Sheet/Issue Brief
Latinx Families’ Strengths and Resilience Contribute to Their Well-being

In this brief, stock is taken from the existing research on strengths and resilience within Latinx families. Based on the analysis of the literature, this brief provides recommendations to researchers for advancing strength-based research on Latino families and to programs and practitioners for building on Latinx families’ strengths in service delivery.

Fact Sheet/Issue Brief
Laugh It Off: How Therapeutic Humor Can Work for You (And Your Communities)

Improve your outlook and reduce harmful stress through humor. That’s the message of this seriously funny workshop where you will get to practice applied therapeutic exercises that you can use every day to improve your wellbeing and the wellness of your clients and others around you. 

 

Research has shown that accessing humor and laughter directly after a stressful situation reduces stress hormones and creates lasting, positive feelings. Muscles relax, breathing changes, and the brain releases endorphins, natural painkillers, and other psychological benefits. Mallori and Lodge will teach you how to laugh off difficult times, and as a result turn the negative impacts of stress into the positive benefits of humor.

Tool
Leadership and Management

Information about the core functions of leadership, management, and group facilitation.

Tool
LEADING LOCALLY: A COMMUNITY POWER-BUILDING APPROACH TO STRUCTURAL CHANGE

The purpose of Lead Local: Community-Driven Change and the Power of Collective Action, a project supported by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), was to understand how community power catalyzes, creates, and sustains conditions for healthy communities.

To explore this question, RWJF brought together a set of partners: Caring Across Generations, Change Elemental, Human Impact Partners and Right to the City Alliance, Johns Hopkins University SNF Agora Institute, USC Equity Research Institute (formerly USC Program for Environmental and Regional Equity), and Vanderbilt University. Turning to those closest to the work, Lead Local partners expanded the project to incorporate the knowledge and expertise of 40 local organizations working in 16 places across the United States.

The report is about the story of community power in 16 places. It is the culmination of a 24-month process to understand how community power catalyzes, creates, and sustains conditions for healthy communities through the lens of local organizations who are building community power to dismantle systems that perpetuate health inequity and to create alternative policy and institutional vehicles that can promote healthy communities.

Report/Research
Local, State, and National Data Sources

This resource provides an annotated list of data sources that provide information on substance misuse and related behavioral health problems.

Tool
Locating Data on Risk Factors for Opioid Overdose

Practitioners working on opioid overdose prevention efforts can use this tool to: learn more about behaviors they know or suspect are contributing to opioid overdose in their communities, in order to better target their prevention efforts; identify new sources of data to supplement those with which they are already familiar; identify proxy measures (that is, data alternatives) for factors of interest (if, for example, specific types of data are not available at the local level); identify potential prevention partners (for example, local hospitals and emergency medical services) who regularly collect data on a range of relevant factors.

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Logic Model Development Guide

Nonprofits today are being pressed to demonstrate the effectiveness of their program activities by initiating and completing outcome-oriented evaluation of projects. This guide was developed to provide practical assistance to nonprofits engaged in this process. In the pages of this guide, we hope to give staff of nonprofits and community members alike sufficient orientation to the underlying principles of "logic modeling" to use this tool to enhance their program planning, implementation, and dissemination activities.

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MA DPH Accessible Print Materials Deck

Explore Massachusetts DPH's comprehensive Print Materials Accessibility Guide, designed to empower individuals and businesses with insights and resources to foster inclusivity and accommodate diverse needs. Discover practical tips and best practices to ensure equitable access on printed documents and materials.

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Making the Case through Media Advocacy: A Toolkit

This toolkit provides a compilation of tips and talking points for making the case for community prevention. They are based on Prevention Institute’s daily analysis of how the media is (and isn’t) framing community prevention. Using this information, you can expand and shift the frame of how the media depicts community prevention, to ensure that the whole picture is shown and that community prevention is framed accurately and comprehensively.

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Managing Behavior in the Classroom Series: Skills for Substance Misuse Prevention Professionals

Prevention Specialists often work in School and Community settings with students. These can be short interactions or ongoing programs, but regardless of duration, they require skills in managing a learning environment, engaging students, and dealing with any negative behaviors of students as they occur in a way that is safe for all students but minimizes disruption. This series is for prevention specialists who want to sharpen these skills of classroom management.

In this three-part training series, you will learn about effective classroom management, including:

● Basic classroom management strategies (March 10, 2023)

● Tips for meaningful student engagement (March 17, 2023)

● Proactive behavior management strategies for facilitating hot-button classroom discussions (March 24, 2023)

You can attend one, two, or all three sessions. You do not need to attend one to attend subsequent sessions.

Report/Research
Marijuana Resource Center

Learn more about marijuana basics, risks of use and protecting youth from its harm.

Fact Sheet/Issue Brief
Massachusetts Opioid Abuse Prevention Collaborative (MOAPC) Guidance Document

This guidance document is a resource for municipalities, individuals, organizations, community coalitions, and other groups who are implementing efforts to prevent and/or reduce opioid misuse and overdose in Massachusetts, including those whose efforts are funded by the Massachusetts Department of Public Health (MDPH) Bureau of Substance Abuse Services (BSAS), and more specifically, grantees of the Massachusetts Opioid Abuse Prevention Collaborative.

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Massachusetts Youth Health Survey (MYHS)

The MYHS is the Massachusetts Department of Public Health's (MDPH) surveillance project to assess the health of youth and young adults in grades 6-12.

It is conducted by the MDPH Health Survey Program in collaboration with the Massachusetts Department of Elementary and Secondary Education (ESE) in randomly selected public middle and high schools in every odd-numbered year. The anonymous survey contains health status questions in addition to questions about risk behaviors and protective factors.

Report/Research