Enhancing Prevention Capacity With Developmental Assets and Getting to Outcomes

Summary

Alcohol and other drug use among youth is costly for communities. More research is needed about how to best support community based prevention programs and how community prevention expertise can inform the research process. The National Institute on Drug Abuse has funded a 5 year collaboration of the RAND Corporation, Search Institute and its training division, Vision Training Associates, Communities for Children and Youth, and the University of Southern Maine to implement and assess the impact on prevention coalitions, the combination of two complimentary, community-based interventions: Developmental Assets, which supports community mobilization and collaboration to promote positive youth development, and Getting To Outcomes (GTO), which enhances community capacity to complete critical prevention tasks (e.g., evaluation). The purpose of the project is to investigate: 1) How well is the Assets-GTO intervention delivered, how much is it used, and what coalitions think about it; 2) The extent to which the Assets-GTO approach enhances the prevention capacity (knowledge, attitudes, and skills) of individual coalition members and the quality of prevention performance; and 3) Whether enhanced prevention capacity improves alcohol and drug outcomes among youth. Twelve community-based prevention coalitions in Maine (part of Communities for Children and Youth) will participate. Six coalitions-determined at random-will receive manuals, training, and on-site technical assistance consisting of bi-Weekly meetings between A-GTO 4 ME! and key coalition staff. The other six coalitions will continue practice as usual, but will receive an abbreviated version of the Assets-GTO intervention near the end of the project. A Community Research Workgroup made of coalition representatives will review all aspects of the study and interim findings and facilitate dissemination on A-GTO 4 ME! The project will demonstrate and evaluate strategies to strengthen the prevention capacity of community organizations that can be used broadly across many types of programs.

Conditions

• Substance Abuse

Interventions

OTHER

Assets Getting To Outcomes

Face to Face Training Assets Getting To Outcomes Manuals Technical Assistance

Sponsors & Collaborators

• National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA)

  collaborator NIH

• Search Institute

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• Communities for Children and Youth

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• University of Southern Maine

  collaborator OTHER

• Visions Training Associates

  collaborator UNKNOWN

• RAND

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• Matthew Chinman, PhD · RAND

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

PREVENTION

Masking

NONE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Min Age

18 Years

Max Age

65 Years

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2008-06-30

Primary Completion

2013-01-31

Completion

2014-03-31

Countries

• United States

Study Locations