© 2010
  University of Idaho
  All rights reserved.
  Psychology Dept.
  University of Idaho
  Design - P&D  CTI

Introduction

This section covers the area of program planning and evaluation.  There are a number of steps to undertake in order to design effective prevention programs and activities to impact a particular population.  A good first step is to appraise the “readiness” of the particular population you are interested in influencing with your prevention programming.  This could be an entire community, or a subpopulation of a community such as a school system or an individual school (i.e., a middle school, senior high school, college or university).  This process is called “assessing community readiness.” 

Once you know about the level of community awareness and the availability of resources, you will know what you need to do to energize and mobilize key stakeholders to address prevention programming needs.  The necessary second step is to conduct a comprehensive needs assessment to analyze the problems in the community in order to be clear about what you are going to target with your programming.  There are a number of methods for gathering data to identify specific problems. 

Once these problems are identified, the third step is to develop and implement strategies to address the identified problems.  This is the strategic planning process and includes the application of a “logic model.”   During this process you will define short-term and long-term goals for each specific problem, identify specific strategies to address each problem by consulting the literature for research-based best practices and model programs, and list the outcomes you anticipate from the implementation of each strategy. 

Finally, you will need to evaluate your efforts on an ongoing basis to 1) determine program effectiveness, and 2) make adjustments to programs to enhance their effectiveness.