Assessing community readiness to address underage drinking: Washington's strategic prevention framework state incentive grant

The State of Washington has funded 12 communities to implement the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention's (CSAP) Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF) to address the state's prevention priority of reducing underage drinking. In addition to setting empirically-based eligibility criteria based on past 30-day alcohol use of 8th graders from a state-administered biennial survey, among other criteria, project management decided to measure each eligible community's “readiness” to use the SPF process to address prevention of underage drinking. The Tri-Ethnic Center's Community Readiness Assessment process was selected based on its extensive use in the field by the Tri-Ethnic Center and others. The Community Readiness Assessment interview measures the stage of readiness of a community to address any issue by conducting structured interviews with informed community members on 6 topical domains: 1) community efforts to address the issue (e.g., available programs and activities), 2) community knowledge of efforts, 3) leadership, 4) community climate, 5) community knowledge about the issue, and 6) resources for prevention efforts. The Community Readiness Assessment includes standard procedures for scoring each interview and for calculating a total readiness score that corresponds to a 9-point readiness continuum. In the 12 funded communities, the Community Readiness Assessment interviews will be re-administered to measure change in level of readiness to address the issue of underage drinking. This presentation will focus on if and how social marking and media interventions implemented in the 12 communities have shifted community awareness of the issue and community readiness to address underage drinking.