Ohio’s Strategic Prevention Framework Partnerships for Success (SPF-PFS) initiative was a five-year grant awarded by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration’s Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (SAMHSA/CSAP) and administered by the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services (OhioMHAS). Between 2014 – 2016, OhioMHAS conducted a planning and needs assessment process to better understand the local infrastructure and capacity needs of rural and Appalachian counties to carry out alcohol and other drug (AOD) prevention at the community level.
From that process, OhioMHAS released a competitive request for proposal (RFP) in July 2016 to select subrecipients for Ohio’s SPF-PFS Initiative. Funded subrecipients (10) and mini-grantees (8) established community stakeholder teams and utilized the Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF) and the Community Coalition Action Theory (Butterfoss & Kegler, 2002) to select and implement evidence-based programs, practices, policies, and strategies to: (1) prevent or reduce the consequences of underage drinking for persons aged 12 to 20 and (2) to reduce prescription drug misuse and abuse among persons aged 12 to 25.
PIRE staff participated on the project as part of Ohio’s SPF-PFS Evaluation Team. In this role, the PIRE team worked in partnership with Ohio University to co-create the evaluation design and evaluation activities. OSET provided evaluation support for Ohio’s SPF-PFS initiative, including training and technical assistance for the essential elements of a strong evaluation framework – data collection, needs assessment, logic modeling, and data-driven strategic planning. PIRE staff also served as local evaluators and as technical assistance leads for subrecipient and mini-grant communities.
