Communities Putting Prevention to Work intervention costs in 44 communities

Background: In 2010, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention funded 44 communities to participate in the Communities Putting Prevention to Work (CPPW) program under under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA). CPPW supported community-based approaches to prevent or delay chronic disease and promote wellness by addressing tobacco use and obesity.

Purpose: To collect and analyze the full programmatic CPPW costs and to assess how communities allocated costs across media, access, point of decision/promotion, price, and social support and services interventions and whether costs or allocations varied by community type or size.  

Methods: Quarterly data on costs were collected from the 44 CPPW communities. Program costs were estimated as spending on labor, materials/supplies, travel, partners, and program administration plus the value of in-kind donations. Communities’ total and per capita costs were estimated for each intervention implemented and compared by initiative and community size and type.

Results: Total ARRA-funded CPPW costs were $358 million, with 6% representing in-kind costs. The largest share of costs for tobacco communities went to media interventions (36%), whereas the largest share of costs for obesity communities went to access interventions (51%). Intervention costs increased with community size to a point; total costs for the largest communities were approximately $15 million.

Conclusions: The CPPW cost study is one of the first efforts to collect prospective cost data for a wide variety of community-based prevention interventions across multiple communities. CPPW communities incurred substantial costs to implement these interventions, with spending allocations varying widely across types of interventions.