Center for Strategic Prevention Support

Challenge

Substance misuse is an urgent public health crisis with far-reaching consequences affecting individuals, families, communities, and society. Current prevention programs are a key factor in mitigating the crisis. Yet we can enhance the equity and impact of these important programs, including bolstering the prevention workforce, by providing high-quality training, technical assistance (TA), and tools. This support empowers communities to work upstream, center equity, and apply prevention science more effectively, enabling us to address the underlying root causes of addiction with greater success.

EDC’s Center for Strategic Prevention Support (CSPS), with funding from the Massachusetts Bureau of Substance Addiction Services (BSAS), guided practitioners and community partners in using strategic planning and evidence-based and evidence-informed programs to prevent and address substance misuse. Building on the expertise of TA providers with in-depth knowledge of SAMHSA’s Strategic Prevention Framework, CSPS leveraged collaborative efforts with practitioners and community partners to drive successful prevention work in Massachusetts.

Key Activities

CSPS activities included the following:

Offered support and consultation to state-funded, community-based initiatives, including the Massachusetts Collaborative for Action, Leadership, and Learning 3-A (MassCALL3A), MassCALL3B, and the State Opioid Response – Prevention in Early Childhood (SOR-PEC) grantees
Delivered comprehensive TA to 58 substance misuse prevention grantees actively engaged in prevention work in 170 cities and towns in Massachusetts
Assessed the professional development needs of prevention practitioners throughout the state, ensuring targeted support and resources were provided
Conducted virtual and in-person meetings, bringing together prevention coordinators to offer guidance, foster peer learning, and collectively tackle challenges
Developed interactive online tools, including a communications toolkit and resource library, to support communities in implementing effective prevention work
Provided TA to help SOR-PEC grantees address the impact of substance misuse on children living with a parent or caregiver with a history of substance misuse and addiction
Collaborated with BSAS on the Strategic Prevention Framework for Prescription Drugs grant, supporting both development and implementation of a strategic plan to tackle prescription drug misuse in the Commonwealth, including conducting activities to support communities and working with the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program to identify potential barriers and explore opportunities to collaborate with prescribers for optimal impact
Organized annual statewide conferences with BSAS focused on substance misuse prevention, providing a platform to share knowledge and collaborate with the grantees we served

Impact

In 2021, CSPS organized the eighth Massachusetts Statewide Prevention Conference, which brought together over 175 public health and prevention professionals working to reduce substance misuse across the Commonwealth. A conference evaluation found that 96% of respondents reported overall satisfaction with the conference, and 97% were likely to use the information they received.
In the 2022 annual CSPS assessment report by the BSAS statewide evaluator, 94% of CSPS grantees felt that CSPS services contributed to their project’s prevention capacity and overall efforts to achieve positive programmatic outcomes, and 92% felt that CSPS centered equity in their operations and programming in a way that embraced the eight principles of restorative prevention.