Prevention Center of Excellence
Annotated Bibliography:
Substance Abuse Prevention and Sustainability
Substance
Abuse Prevention and Sustainability available in PDF.
(Download Acrobat Reader)
Compiled by Clare Desrosiers
May 10, 2006
Birkby, B. (n.d.). Community readiness for strategic planning in
substance abuse prevention: Literature review, conceptual framework, and
proposed plan. Louisville, KY: REACH of Louisville, Inc.
This article provides a definition of sustainability and discusses the
goals of sustainability. The author notes that sustainability requires
community readiness, on-going planning, effective leadership and strong
champions. The author recommends assessment of the leadership atmosphere
at the local level when considering a new community for a system
innovation and provides two possible questions for such an assessment.
He provides a summary, in table format, of available tools for assessing
both readiness and sustainability as well as information about a
sustainability planning workbook. Finally, he summarizes the steps of
the Kentucky community readiness plan.
Center for Substance Abuse Prevention. (2000). 1999 Pilot training
manual, Getting to outcomes: Methods and tools for planning,
self-evaluation and accountability (Conference edition). Washington, DC:
Author. Retrieved May 15, 2006, from
http://www.preventiondss.org/Macro/Csap/dss_portal/
templates_redesign/interest_paths/interest_path_comm.cfm?sect_id=1&topic_id=99&CFID=282851&CFTOKEN=58489620&
link_item=15
The manual provides a brief discussion about sustainability and a list
of strategies to build sustainability.
Galano, J., Credle, W., Perry, D., Berg, S. W., Huntington, L., & Stief,
E. (2001). Developing and sustaining a successful community prevention
initiative: The Hampton Healthy Families partnership. The Journal of
Primary Prevention, 21(4), 495-509.
This article summarizes the development and sustainment of a prevention
initiative. The initiative worked to sustain itself by engaging in a
system conversion process that included establishing a long-term
financing plan, multi-year planning and budgeting, developing a
community and publicly funded budget, and restructuring of services. The
authors also report that key factors responsible for the “persistence
and growth of the initiative over time include demonstrated successes
documented through annual program evaluations, the close relationship of
the initiative to key city priorities, the institutionalization of the
partnership organization in the city strategic plan, and the widespread
community supports” (p. 508).
Hausman, A. J., Becker, J., & Brawer, R. (2005). Identifying value
indicators and social capital in community health partnerships. Journal
of Community Psychology, 33(6), 691-703.
In this article, the authors emphasize the importance of involving
communities in the identification of indicators of success for an
outcome evaluation. They also note that outcome evaluation is very
important for program sustainability and success. The article includes a
description of the questionnaire utilized to gather data for this study.
Johnson, K., Haysm, C., Center, H., & Daley, C. (2004). Building
capacity and sustainable prevention innovations: A sustainability
planning model. Evaluation and Program Planning, 27(2), 135-149.
This article reports on an extensive review of literature about
sustainability and the authors’ synthesis of the knowledge gained from
this review into a sustainability planning model with goals, objectives,
and strategies for achievement of sustainability. The authors identify
factors from the literature that need to be addressed by programs in
order sustain innovations. They describe a five stage sustainability
action strategy and note that in order for achievement of sustainability
to occur, organizations must have sustainability readiness – “adequate
infrastructure and an innovation that has been confirmed as
sustainable.”
Kramer, J. S., Philliber, S., Brindis, C. D., Kamin, S. L., Chadwick, A.
E., Revels, M. L., Chervin, D. D., Driscoll, A., Bartelli, D., Wike, R.
S., Peterson, S. A., Schmidt, C. K., & Valderrama, L. T. (2005).
Coalition models: Lessons learned from the CDC’s Community Coalition
Partnership Programs for the prevention of teen pregnancy. Journal of
Adolescent Health, 37, S20-S30.
This article describes a study of community coalition members’
perceptions of coalition outcome achievement, resource development, and
internal functioning. In relation to sustainability, most of the 13
coalitions’ who participated in the study were not sustained at the end
of their funding cycle with the CDC. The authors connect “these
coalitions’ inability to thrive [to]…the challenges of creating
coalitions in response to a funding opportunity.” One of the greatest
challenges faced by many of the coalitions was sustainment of
community residents’ involvement “as members of the community-wide
coalition or in the neighborhood coalitions.” Factors that were
positively associated with positive perceived outcomes were having a
catchment area-wide coalition and a steering or executive committee.
Factors negatively associated with positive perceived outcomes were
“having a new coalition, having a CBO [community-based organization] as
a hub, and experiencing changes in the organizational model.” The
authors conclude from their findings that “coalition-model initiatives
will be most successful when a broad-based, well-established, clearly
led and organized coalition is employed to do the work.”
Miller, R. L., Bedney, B. J., Guenther-Grey, C., & The CITY Project
Study Team. (2003). Assessing organizational capacity to deliver HIV
prevention services collaboratively: Tales from the field. Health
Education and Behavior, 30(5), 582-600.
The authors emphasize the importance of organizational sustainability to
“a community’s health promotion infrastructure” (p. 584). They report
they use collaboration as one strategy to achieve sustainability. The
evaluation tool described in this article measures the capacity of an
organization to achieve sustainability.
Pluye, P., Potvin, L., Denis, J. L., & Pelletier, J. (2004). Program
sustainability: Focus on organizational routines. Health Promotion
International, 19(4), 489-500.
The authors report on their study of organizational routines, which they
propose, in accordance with other research literature, impacts
organizational sustainability. As part of the study, the authors created
four degrees of program sustainability: the absence of any activity
derived from programs, the presence of unofficial activities, the
presence of remaining official activities, and the presence of
routinized activities. They conclude from their study of five Quebec
Heart Health Demonstration Projects that their classification refines
the basis for assessing program sustainability but that the scale they
used to do so needs to be further validated.
Sibthorpe, B. M., Glasgow, N. J., & Wells, R. W. (2005). Emergent themes
in the sustainability of primary health care innovation. MJA, 183(10),
S77-S80.
This article summarizes themes that emerged among six studies of
different types of sustainability in primary health care: political,
institutional, financial, economic, client, and workforce. Of relevance
to substance abuse prevention were findings that social relationships,
networks and champions were “critical for sustainability…[as is] a solid
policy footing, streams of funding that are ongoing, and enduring client
demand…[and] the motivation and capacity of agents to both adapt
innovation and adapt to innovation so that it can be sustained.”
Wakerman, J., Chalmers, E. M., Humphreys, J. S., Clarence, C. L., Bell,
A. I., Larson, A., Lyle, D., & Pashen, D. R. (2005). Sustainable chronic
disease management in remote Australia. MJA, 183, S64-S68.
In this article, the authors examine the facilitators and barriers to
sustainability in a health care initiative project. Facilitators were
flexible implementation strategies, high level of community engagement,
congruence between the timing of policies and community readiness,
effective communication between organizations, project champions
consistently participating in organizations, effective use of monitoring
and evaluation data, and adequate and ongoing funding.
