The most successful community coalitions receiving Drug-Free Communities Support Program (DFC) funding are characterized by strong decision-making structures, using data and research to refine and develop coalition strategies, and using internal coalition tensions and conflicts as opportunities for growth and learning.

This is reported in the 2006 Annual Findings Report for the DFC National Evaluation recently released by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP). The national evaluation seeks to understand the effectiveness of the overall DFC program in meeting its two goals: 1) to reduce substance abuse among youth by addressing local risk and protective factors to minimize the likelihood of subsequent substance abuse in the community, and 2) to support community anti-drug coalitions by establishing, strengthening and fostering collaboration among public and private nonprofit agencies, as well as federal, state, local and tribal governments to prevent and reduce substance abuse.

The 2006 findings suggest preliminary information to better understand what might make some DFC grantees more successful than others. The evaluation found a subset of 52 DFC grantees that are making strides at achieving reductions in 30-day substance abuse rates for alcohol, tobacco or marijuana. These exemplars were statistically different than the other DFC coalitions in the following capacities:

• Achieved or exceeded their stated grant objectives,
• Used data from their process and outcome evaluations for program planning, refinement and elimination,
• Reported that tensions/problems among coalition members were used as opportunities to strengthen their coalition,
• Staff represented the geographic and cultural diversity of the community,
• Engaged in advanced decision-making processes,
• Conducted fewer basic collaborative activities, possibly focusing on the quality of collaborative activities rather than the quantity.

The national evaluation also looked at a select group of coalitions that had achieved two or more statistically significant positive trends in past 30-day use of alcohol, tobacco or marijuana compared to the average for all DFC communities. The 23 “most successful” coalitions are characterized by:

• Greater perceived ability to sustain coalition leadership – these coalitions more strongly agreed that they had a plan for continued leadership and had greater confidence in their ability to develop new coalition leaders.
• Greater likelihood of using primarily evidence-based strategies – The DFC grantees more strongly agreed that they intended to use evidence-based strategies to bring about community change.
• More proficient in assessing the knowledge and skills among their coalition and community members to do coalition work – These coalitions reported greater competency in assessing the resources outside of their community, knowing how to develop a theory of change for their coalition and community, and how to engage in effective prevention and implement a community intervention.
• Research and data driven – The “most successful” grantees indicated greater frequency of using community health and other data for planning purposes.

The 2006 Annual Report documents findings on data collected during the 2006 fiscal year. Data used include grantee progress reports, data collected in previous evaluation efforts and information collected to classify coalitions by stage of development. The findings are preliminary and mostly descriptive in nature but provide some insight to better understand the contributions the DFC program is making to address substance abuse at the local level.