Tuesday, July 20, 2010

Final post . . . at least for now

The Prevention WINS coalition has been funded by a SPF-SIG grant through the Washington State Division of Behavioral Health and Recovery since 2006. The grant ends next week. In partnership with Seattle Children's Hospital, Prevention WINS has applied for a Drug Free Communities (DFC) grant but, if it is awarded, funds won't kick in until October.

With that in mind, this is my last post for a while. The next post will announce if the coalition will receive DFC funds. So, check back here at the end of August/early September for news about the DFC grant and the coalition.

Thanks goes out to all coalition members who have increased the ability of our community to prevent underage drinking!

Enjoy the summer and I hope to be back with good news before it's over!

Thursday, July 8, 2010

Highly involved partners boost coalition success

A recent study evaluated the efforts of the Allies Against Asthma Program, demonstrating that community coalitions with highly involved partnerships are the most successful in producing policy and systems change. The results offer useful implications for anti-drug coalitions to achieve community-level outcomes, according to CADCA's latest Research Into Action bulletin.

At the end of the bulletin, CADCA notes that growing evidence demonstrates that coalitions can achieve community-level outcomes by focusing on policies and systems to affect key health indicators.

The findings also suggest that coalitions with fewer highly engaged partners, as opposed to many less engaged partners, contribute to greater changes.