Alaska's SPF SIG e-Newsletter

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March 2013

In This Issue

• UAA Rural Development Student of the Year
• Meet Our New TA Team Member
• New Format for Our Monthly Check-in Calls
• Key Informant Interviews
• New Resource: Cultural Intervention Models in Mental Health
• Save the Date: April 29, Webinar: Marketing and Social Media Campaigns
• Missed the Data Utilization Webinar Series?

Congratulations!

The SPF-SIG team would like to extend warm and hearty congratulations to Lisa Ellanna-Stickling, Nome’s SPF-SIG Project Director, for being selected as the UAA Rural Development Student of the Year! Nice accomplishment!

New TA Team Member

The Community Prevent Support Team welcomes its newest member, Arlene Wilson. Having joined the Agnew::Beck team in 2012, Arlene’s experience with process and outcomes management, performance improvement, program development and data management highlights her career in social services. Her ability to mediate challenges and resolve conflicts has brought her to the forefront of many critical organizational transformations. Most recently before coming to work for Agnew::Beck, Arlene worked for a large nonprofit behavioral services organization where she provided oversight of the agency’s performance improvement processes, developed an outcomes management program, participated in departmental and organizational strategic planning and developed and conducted trainings.

Monthly Check-In Calls … New Format

As we move into the implementation and evaluation phases, the focus of our monthly calls will shift to focusing on the specific needs of each grantee. All project staff working on strategy implementation should participate in these calls. The Community Prevention Support Team will be hosting the calls and will be in touch with you over the next few weeks to schedule the first call for some time in April.

Key Informant Interviews

As part of their ongoing fidelity evaluation, State Evaluators Jodi and Rachel will be conducting key informant interviews with each grantee. These will begin once the strategic planning process is complete. The interviews will be similar to the focus groups conducted in September, but will focus on interviewing only a couple people who have been critical to the development of each grantee’s strategic plan.

Strategic Plans

Strategic plans have successfully been submitted by each grantee. Some have already been approved and returned, with recommendations about ways to strengthen them … others are in varying stages of the review process. The next steps are to begin the implementation process … building up the action plans, getting as-needed training or support for specific strategies and beginning to implement those strategies that can be easily started. The Community Prevention Support Team is planning for a series of trainings to help people with implementation, evaluation and sustainability issues. Speaking of trainings ... see the following item to save the date for Marketing and Social Media Campaigns webinar, focusing on a strategy selected by every grantee.

Save the Date: April 29

Michelle Frye-Spray, from the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention, will be conducting a webinar on April 29 that focuses on marketing and social media campaigns, a strategy that all of the grantees have incorporated into their strategic plans. This webinar will drill deeper into implementation, evaluation and fidelity in relation to marketing and social media campaigns.

Spotlight on Resources: Cultural Intervention Models in Mental Health

Lisa in Nome found An Annotated Bibliography of Cultural Intervention Models in Mental Health in Canada and describes it as a great resource you might want to review. As she stated, “It is a list of peer-reviewed papers, academic journals and many PhD dissertations about how cultural interventions are effective in mental health approaches in Canada.” Many of the resources listed in this bibliography are relevant to Alaska Native culture, and all of the resources have an abstract that will help you determine its relevance to your activity/strategy/goal. Lisa considers this a great resource to strengthen grant applications. Thanks for sharing this with us, Lisa!

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Missed the Data Utilization Webinar Series?

Although the Data Utilization Webinar Series has ended, you can still benefit from the presentations! This information is critical for the next phases of the project. Links to the PowerPoint documents and the associated handouts will be located on the SPF SIG Website (Tools and Resources > Step 1 Assessment). As a reminder, the topics for the series were:

Data Utilization: Getting Down to Basics describes why it is important to use data to improve prevention planning and how data is utilized within each step of the SPF.
Data Collection: Sources and Methods focuses on strategies for using existing Alaska and national data sources to better understand a community’s drug and alcohol related problems, identifying appropriate data collection methods and determining criteria for assessing quality data.
Data Reporting: Mobilization and Sustainability will describe how to develop an effective data dissemination plan, determine the most appropriate methods for communicating findings to various stakeholders and identify how to use data to mobilize prevention efforts.

Thanks to Michelle Frye-Spray and the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention for developing and sharing this information!