WHAT’S NEW

Innovation in Prevention

Strategy Management (InsightVision)

We are pioneering the use of a strategic performance management system that allows communities to overcome the challenge of aligning fragmented local alcohol, tobacco, other drugs, and suicide (ATODS) prevention efforts.

The InsightVision system is built on heavily researched performance management concepts used in the private sector, now adapted for social services and public health. The system offers a framework for taming the complexity of ATODS prevention. In fact, there is a clear cause-and-effect visual inherent in the strategy maps and scorecards used within the system that demonstrate how future outcomes are impacted by the outputs, processes, and inputs of today. The concept behind strategic performance management is for entities, whether an organization or a community, to define, assess, and continuously enhance the overall strategy.

While we are still working toward full use of the system, we have accomplished the following since June 2016:

• Developed state-level templates and community-level customized strategy maps for underage drinking, adult overconsumption, tobacco prevention, opioid and prescription drug abuse, illegal drug misuse and abuse, and suicide. Strategy maps are used to coordinate intentional change, create a framework for addressing large-scale system needs, and offer a visual depiction of a strategic plan to address an issue.
• Translated county strategy maps and strategic plans into scorecards. Each scorecard contains the counties strategic objectives, measures, and actions. This allows appropriate measures to be assigned to each objective to monitor progress. It also allows the strategic actions (or what work is being done to drive measures and reach objectives) to be clearly displayed and easily managed.
• Built county and state level needs assessment scorecards. These scorecards will bring the needs assessment data into a more interactive format that will further support and enhance the communities’ capacity to assess their needs. Each scorecard follows the outcome-based prevention model for defining and organizing key data. Once all data has been imported, these scorecards will be publicly available on our website to increase community access to the data.
• Incorporated research and evidence, community conditions, and short-term evaluation supports and resources within the system to bring the science on evidence-based and best practices to the forefront, while also providing each community the flexibility to further define their specific community conditions and short-term evaluation details.

From June – December 2016, we have provided roughly 1400 direct technical assistance hours to prevention specialists to support their use of the system. This includes direct training as well as the time spent building out and customizing each county’s strategy maps and scorecards.

You can view our white paper on strategic performance management here.

Capacity Building and Community Engagement

Capacity building and community engagement is an integral part of prevention. We aim to empower communities to build their capacity and leverage the resources and assets available to them. Our prevention specialists work daily to build and maintain collaborative efforts and partnerships with stakeholders. In addition to their community engagement and capacity building efforts, we work as an organization to offer prevention specialists and coalitions with support and further training to enhance their skills and effectiveness.

Since June 2016, we have worked to achieve the following:

• Supporting communities with participating in capacity assessments. The assessments were conducted by the Wyoming Survey and Analysis Center (WYSAC) to identify the current level of capacity across seven priority capacity ingredients – 1) workforce; 2) resources; 3) effective communication; 4) community engagement; 5) active leadership; 6) readiness for change, and 7) sustainability. Each report offered recommendations for community capacity building planning and implementation.
• Supporting capacity development planning. Based on the assessment reports and recommendations, we have worked to support communities as they created capacity development plans. These plans will further guide the community in building their capacity over time.
• Enhancing PMO leadership capacity to coach for prevention outcomes. This training was provided by the Center for the Application of Prevention Technologies. It furthered our leadership team’s skills related to characteristics of coaching and training; the coaching approach; framework to design coaching strategies; using powerful questions; assessing a community’s need for coaching; selecting services, and meeting the coaching need of multiple partners.
• Improving capacity for collective impact. Collective Impact is a community engagement model that is centered on five conditions – 1) develop a common agenda; 2) establish shared measurements; 3) foster mutually reinforcing activities; 4) encourage continuous communication; and 5) offers strong backbone support. We brought a two-day workshop to Wyoming to further define these concepts and provide opportunities for learning. These concepts can be used to further how community coalitions come together to achieve their goals. To learn more about collective impact, please visit: https://collectiveimpactforum.org/. You can also watch a for an overview.
• Supporting communities with strategic use of media. The strategic use of media and social marketing is an important component of generating grassroots support and educating and engaging the community. We have worked to support communities in identifying their target audience, conducting focus groups, determining messages that resonate with the target audience, and designing traditional and social media materials that further the effectiveness of the research-based messaging.