Getting Started on Your Communities Talk Activity

A Communities Talk activity should be part of a community’s overall substance use and misuse prevention strategy. Communities should collect and carefully analyze data to understand:

• Underlying needs and conditions that must be addressed to prevent and reduce alcohol and other drug misuse among 18- to 25-year-olds;
• Resources that are required or available to move prevention forward; and
• Goals, target populations, and desired outcomes for the community.

The results of your assessment should guide the development of your prevention activity.

Assessment Steps

• Convene an assessment committee or workgroup of different community stakeholders.
• Create a data collection plan, which can be a focus group or even a simple survey of a select segment of the community.
• Collect data on alcohol and other drug misuse rates in your state or region through the State Profiles and the state and district comparisons to national data included in the Youth Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance Summaries, then identify any gaps in data.
• Analyze the data and use it to inform the content and planning of your activity.
• Implement the plan.
• Create a process to evaluate the outcome of your Communities Talk activity. Sending the same survey six months or one year later can show if the results you expected from your Communities Talk prevention activity are emerging.

Assessment Tools

• SAMHSA's Strategic Prevention Framework has information about the five steps of effective strategic planning, including details about conducting assessments.
• SAMHSA's Focus on Prevention provides more information about the value and process of conducting a community assessment as the foundation for effective action.

SAMHSA encourages Communities Talk organizers to customize their prevention activities—whether in-person or virtual—to meet the unique needs of their communities. Such needs may include those created by widely experienced challenges or crises.

Planning stipends can be used in many ways to support other prevention activities. See the Planning Toolkit for more information.

Timing

Communities Talk activities can and should be organized at a time when they will have the most impact. You know best where the opportunities lie to bring together stakeholders to start or continue a dialogue on this issue.

SAMHSA resources are designed to support activities at any time of year. You can take advantage of seasonal opportunities, including:

• SAMHSA's Prevention Day in February
• Spring break for colleges and universities in March
• Alcohol Awareness Month in April
• SAMHSA's National Prevention Week and prom and graduation season in May
• Months with high rates of alcohol use initiation by youth in June and July
• Back-to-school activities in August
• National Recovery Month in September
• National Substance Abuse Prevention Month and Red Ribbon Week in October
• National Impaired Driving Prevention Month in December

Planning Tools

• In addition to the Planning Toolkit, activity hosts can access the following sources for strategies and information about how to conduct a successful Communities Talk event. SAMHSA's Substance Misuse Prevention for Young Adults guide provides relevant research findings, examines emerging and best practices, identifies knowledge gaps and implementation challenges, and offers resources you can use in your local strategies.
• SAMHSA's Focus on Prevention offers information that organizations can use to plan and deliver prevention strategies in a wide array of settings and through a variety of methods.
• SAMHSA-funded Prevention Technology Transfer Center (PTTC) provide technical assistance and learning resources, including webinars and products to help plan virtual meetings, for you to use in your substance use and misuse prevention efforts.

The promotion plan you develop for your Communities Talk activity serves as a guide to ensure community participation and coverage of your activity. It also will help you maximize the impact on prevention conversations and actions in your community. As you get started, consider following these key steps:

• Create a timeline to accomplish all your promotional goals. Be realistic about how long it will take to develop your marketing materials, contact the media, and invite your audiences. Consider other community activities that may attract your audience's attention and whether you need to schedule your promotional activities to avoid conflicts.
• Integrate your promotion timeline into a workplan that details each specific task and who is responsible for its completion. Remember, steady drumbeats of promotion are usually more effective than last-minute surges of activity.
• Record your plan's progress. This can be as simple as setting up a template that you can update easily with key metrics as they become available, such as dates and content of social media posts along with corresponding "likes" or "shares," open rates on email outreach, or visits to your website. Then, take time to study where things are working well and build on those examples.
• Be willing to adapt. If your promotional activities do not produce the desired results, be willing to modify them. Small tweaks to social media posts may make a big difference in engagement.
• Following the activity, evaluate the effectiveness of your promotional plan and adjust the activities as needed to prepare for the next Communities Talk activity. Ask questions such as: Did the use of social media increase attendance? How well did our promotional activities support continued engagement and message dissemination?

Remember to develop your evaluation plan before your event or activity takes place. What do you want to achieve? Who do you want to engage? What do you want people to take away from their participation?

Continue by matching your goals with methods for measuring whether you achieved them. There are many ways to evaluate your activity. You can send out surveys, conduct focus groups, or interview participants. Choose the method that works best for you and easily helps you to understand if you achieved your goals and why.

Less data-driven but also helpful inputs that give shape to the outcomes of your activity can include:

• New ideas proposed by attendees;
• New partnerships formed as a result of your activity;
• Next steps that were established during your activity; and
• Local policy changes designed to reduce alcohol and other drug misuse.

Sharing Your Activity Outcomes

Promoting the success and tangible outcomes of your Communities Talk activity can come in handy when you need to demonstrate the impact of your organization's prevention efforts or even apply for grant funding.

Consider the following ways to share and benefit from your activity outcomes:

• Develop a brief evaluation report for internal and external distribution.
• Present your findings in a PowerPoint presentation to share at local events, trainings, or conferences.
• Use key findings from your evaluation data to inform a local media campaign (e.g., infographic, posters, messaging).
• Develop a key outcomes tip sheet containing content that can be easily adapted for future reports, promotional materials, and grant applications.

Sharing Your Prevention Story

SAMHSA wants to know about your successes and outcomes! The evaluation information you share with SAMHSA can help the agency better understand the local prevention landscape in your community, shape programs that help you continue the momentum, and showcase your prevention work.

To share your story with SAMHSA:

• Log into your Communities Talk profile anytime after your activity to review and update details about what you did. Post the date of your activity, goals, and other details.
• Share your activity details may also lead to your activity being highlighted as a Prevention Story. Remember that you must enter your activity date to be considered for a Prevention Story.
• Upload promotional materials, meeting videos and photos, and copies of media coverage, which will help tell your prevention story.

Evaluation and Measurement Tools

Use SAMHSA's evaluation and measurement tools to aid in your evaluation efforts:

• The Evidence-Based Practices Resource Center contains a collection of scientifically based resources, including those you can use to evaluate your prevention efforts.
• The SAMHSA-funded Prevention Technology Transfer Center (PTTC) provide technical assistance and learning resources on a variety of topics, including evaluation.