The Power of Partnerships in Prevention

Background: According to the White House’s Community Partnerships Interagency Policy Committee, solutions for problems are often outside the control of government alone, and the U.S. Government is demonstrating that, in today’s networked world, it provides better services to citizens when it works with others and maximizes the use of partners’ core competencies.1

That’s why partnerships have been an important strategy for SAMHSA’s National Prevention Week (NPW), an annual health observance designed to raise awareness about the consequences of substance misuse and to engage communities in prevention efforts, since its inception in 2012. They are key to amplifying SAMHSA’s prevention messages and encouraging broad, national participation in prevention.2

1. Community Partnerships Interagency Policy Committee. (2013). Building Partnerships: A Best Practices Guide. Retrieved from https://www.fs.fed.us/sites/default/files/building-partnerships-a-best-practices-guide.pdf 2. Shortell, S. M., Zukoski, A. P., Alexander, A., et al. (2002.) Evaluating Partnerships for Community Health Improvement: Tracking the Footprints. Journal of Health Politics, Policy, and Law 1: 49–91.

Program background: Over the past 3 years, NPW has experienced considerable gains in exposure through a three-pronged partnership approach and a robust collaborative engagement strategy that includes:

• Federal agencies with shared missions
• National organizations shared audiences
• CBOs/coalitions

SAMHSA created the following benefits strategy:

• Partners receive free, vetted, customizable materials and content to support the shared goal of advancing prevention.
• Materials provide consistency of messaging in a national prevention-based campaign.
• Partners enjoy the association with a prominent, reputable federal agency that heightens the profile of prevention outreach efforts on a local level.
• Cross promotion opportunities to expand audiences.

To keep collaboration strong and constructive, we executed the following tactics:

• Conducted ongoing, regular communications to generate and exchange ideas
• Tailored strategies for specific partners to plug into NPW
• Created a special partner toolkit to support their NPW initiatives
• Developed social media-optimized customizable videos to fit their community’s/audiences’ needs
• Spotlighted partners via NPW’s Prevention Works email distribution list and showcased partners’ NPW events taking place and across the country
• Include a partner perspective through presentations in the NPW webinar series

Evaluation Methods and Results: The number of active NPW partners increased from 27 to 46 over a 3-year period. Through partner social media support on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram; email marketing; and featured articles, combined partner promotional efforts generated more than 18.7 million potential social media impressions. SAMHSA partners were particularly engaged around the NPW 2018 Prevention Challenge—an important social media tactic. We know that more than 128,000 USA.Gov supporters were reached about NPW.

Conclusions: By being creative, collaborative, and strategic, NPW 2018 ushered in unprecedented levels of national and community engagement across the country, helping to spread the message of prevention far and wide.

Implications for research and/or practice: SAMHSA has begun to focus on year-round NPW activities as a way to strengthen and sustain these collaborations.