Coalition Effectiveness

This publication is designed to help communities understand the relevance of Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) to their local work. It describes how CBPR is different from traditional research, the historical groundings of this research approach, principles of CBPR and examples/lessons learned from CBPR projects. The goal of this publication is to help coalitions understand how they can be involved in and contribute to the CBPR process, including how to select a research partner and how to set up a successful CBPR project. The goal of this publication is to help coalitions understand how they can become involved in research and why their involvement is valuable and critically important to furthering our understanding of how we can effectively reduce substance abuse at the population level.

Although collaborative partnerships, such as coordinating councils and coalitions, hold a high status among communities, the research field remains uncertain about how these partnerships best employ efforts to impact communities in the long run. However, results from a recent study conducted by researchers from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign suggest that the success intermediate outcomes, such as promotion of knowledge and strong relationships, significantly relate to and influence each other and long-term outcomes.

This paper was developed to be responsive to the coalition field and to help coalitions understand how environmental strategies are critical elements of a comprehensive plan to reduce substance use and abuse. Environmental strategies are used to change the context (environment) in which substance use and abuse occur. Environmental strategies incorporate efforts aimed at changing or influencing community conditions, standards, institutions, structures, systems and policies (Babor, 2003).

The CADCA National Coalition Institute’s Roadmap to Success provides a guide about the training opportunities and other CADCA resources created for Drug Free Communities Support Program (DFC) Grantees.

In community settings, fidelity poses a significant challenge to successfully implementing evidence-based programs (EBPs). Fidelity refers to the implementation of a program in the identical method in which it was tested by researchers to achieve similar results. According to a recent study conducted by researchers at Pennsylvania State University’s Prevention Research Center, various positive elements of coalition functioning, such as strong leadership and program fidelity, influence a coalition’s ability to support the high-quality implementation of EBPs.