3.1  Enhancing Program and Community Readiness

The key factors described in Step Two of this tutorial illustrate ways to assess the readiness of your community to implement, support, or sustain prevention activities. Once you conduct community readiness, you may realize that your community has weaknesses regarding one or more of the key factors. What do you do?

First, it is important to remember that program and community readiness is a multidimensional dynamic process. For example, community readiness involves multiple dimensions (which we have called key factors); it is not static but increases and decreases over time; different key factors will increase or decrease independently from other key factors; and overall community readiness evolves over time.

The practical importance of this is simple and necessary: You can improve your community’s interest, ability, and willingness to initiate substance abuse efforts. The following several sections provide practical tips for improving community readiness.