Prevention planning is a long-term process that communities, organizations, regions, states and nations embark upon when they decide to start developing strategies to address substance abuse problems. There are many different ways to think about prevention planning. The planning process is really just a way of answering these questions:

• Where have you been and where are you now?
• Where do you want to go?
• How do you plan get there? and
• How can you prove you got to where you said you wanted to be?

In Nebraska, we have developed a Toolkit to assist communities to do effective substance abuse prevention planning. The Toolkit will soon be available online. This is a rough outline of the Nebraska substance abuse prevention planning process (or logic model):

Mission
Assessment
Problem Statement
Target
Goals
Objectives
Outcomes
Strategies
Evaluation
Sustainability

Mission

People come together to begin a prevention planning process for a reason. You have decided to work together to accomplish something. This "something" is your mission. A mission statement is a sentence or two that expresses the purpose of your prevention planning effort to your stakeholders and to the public. A clear and concise mission statement will help guide the planning process.

Assessment

Assessment is a structured method used to gather information in order to record and analyze the extent of a particular problem. Assessments are the tools you will use to ensure that you are engaging in a data-driven decision-making process.

Problem Statement

People engage in planning efforts in order to try and solve problems. A problem statement is a brief description of the most important issues that compromise the health and well-being of your community, region or state. A problem statement is a brief description of the specific problem that your planning initiative will address. In this section, you will write a problem statement.

Target

Identifying the target of your initiative will determine who or what, specifically, your effort will focus on changing. Your initiative can target:

• Individuals;
• Groups of individuals connected by relationships (families; an organization);
• Groups of individuals connected by a geographically related area (community or block); or
• Systems (such as a school system, court system or local prevention infrastructure).

Goals

Goals identify in broad terms how your initiative is going to change things in order to solve the problem you have identified. The goals describe the kind of changes you want to see occur throughout your focus area.

Objectives

Objectives are more precise statements than goals, that describe the changes in conditions or personal attributes that have to take place in order to reach your goals. Objectives address those underlying conditions or personal attributes that either contribute to - or protect against - substance use and abuse.

Outcomes

Outcomes are even more specific statements that describe the tangible accomplishments that demonstrate that progress is being made. Outcomes are specific, measurable, and time-limited statements that indicate your initiative is on the road to success. Only by developing measurable outcomes will you be able to measure whether or not your initiative is achieving its goals.

Strategies

A strategy is a very broadly stated course of action, based on theory, that is selected in order to achieve goals.

Evaluation

Evaluation is the process of analyzing whether or not your initiative has achieved the desired outcomes, and why. There are two types of evaluation, process and outcome. If you are analyzing issues around the implementation of your initiative, you are doing a process evaluation. If you are analyzing issues related to the outcomes of your project, you are doing outcome evaluation.

Sustainability

Sustainability is the process of maintaining and sustaining the outcomes of your initiative into the future. Sustainability is the ability of those outcomes to continue to be produced over the long term. Sustainability encompasses the process of change and improvement that your project goes through when you make modifications based on the findings of your process and outcome evaluations. Sustainable efforts create an infrastructure that supports and maintains a strategic planning process that builds the capacity of organizations, communities, regions or states, and nourishes the implementation of approaches that both reduce risks and meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their goals.