Think globally, act locally: Assessing the impact of community-based substance abuse prevention

The devolution of national programs to state and local control creates special challenges for evaluators as policy ideas are implemented in a variety of ways in local communities. This paper describes the national evaluation of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Fighting Back program, a multi-site demonstration of community-based substance abuse prevention. The evaluation follows the dictum ''think globally, act locally'' and is designed to provide information to understand communities' response to alcohol and drug problems while simultaneously assessing program outcomes. The use of multiple methods of data collection, including large-scale survey's and social indicators, along with qualitative studies of communities, allows ''triangulation'' of project findings. The assessment of the project at early implementation suggests that Fighting Back communities have implemented a broad range of strategies to arrest substance use. A baseline has been established against which the impact of the program can be measured as it matures. The present evaluation underscores the essential role of both process and outcome assessment of comprehensive community-based programs and the role of evaluation in helping to design more effective strategies. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.