Program Details

Practice Type:	Model
Program Name:	Technical Assistance for Data-Driven Community-Based Injury Prevention
Organization:	Tri-County Health Department
Web site:
Overview:	This program targeted community organizations in the Denver metropolitan area which are funded by a local foundation to address unintentional injury prevention. The goals of the program are to: 1) increase funding for unintentional injury prevention at the community level; and 2) increase the capacity of community-based organizations to create data-driven injury prevention programs to increase the effectiveness and sustainability of their work. The outcomes of the program include: 100% of agencies developed measurable objectives and implemented associated evaluation strategies for their injury prevention activities; 100% of agencies had plans in place to sustain all or part of their unintentional injury prevention activities beyond the grant period; Over a three and one half year period, this program resulted in $1.2 million dollars being directed toward unintentional injury prevention in the Denver metropolitan area; and Four of the seven grantees submitted abstracts and all were accepted to describe their projects at the 2005 National Conference on Injury Prevention and Control.l
Year Submitted:	2006
Responsiveness and Innovation:	This program addresses a variety of unintentional injury prevention issues such as child passenger safety, child wheeled-sport safety, older adult fall prevention, residential fire safety for preschool age children, and poisoning prevention. It is important to note that one of the innovative aspects of this program is that it can be applied to virtually any public health issue, depending on community needs. This practice differs from other approaches in two primary ways: 1) Leveraged funding for unintentional injury prevention – a chronically underfunded issue – by serving as a funding intermediary between a local foundation and the community. Not only did the program receive approximately $300,000 over three and a half years to serve in this coordinating agency capacity, but it also channeled nearly $1 million over a three-year period into injury prevention programming in the community. 2) Used the agency's technical assistance role specifically to increase community capacity to use data to evaluate, improve and sustain their programs beyond the grant period. It was innovative for program staff to step out of the role of program provision and focus the work on helping other agencies maximize their opportunities to implement, evaluate and sustain their programming. More commonly, technical assistance provided by a local health department to a community organization is usually related to program implementation – not data use, program evaluation and sustainability.
Agency and Community Roles:	Tri-County Health Department’s role in this practice consisted of selecting the public health focus area for the initiative, coordinating the community grantmaking process, selecting the organizations for funding, monitoring the funded grants and, most importantly, providing an intentional plan of technical assistance to grantees with the ultimate goal that, at the end of the three-year grant period, they would increase their ability for data use and program evaluation as well as acquired skills to help sustain their activities beyond the grant period. The primary “partners” were the seven community organizations funded through the process. Throughout the three-year grant period, they provided feedback in their skill levels and interest areas of program evaluation and sustainability so that their technical assistance plan could be tailored appropriately. In addition, they were ultimately accountable for implementing, not only their funded program activities, but also the evaluation and sustainability plans they created with the agency's assistance. The other major partner was The Colorado Trust, the foundation that funded the initiative. In addition to financial resources, they provided many other supportive resources throughout the initiative that enriched the program's ability to deliver technical assistance.
Costs and Expenditures:
Implementation:	This program addresses a variety of unintentional injury prevention issues such as child passenger safety, child wheeled-sport safety, older adult fall prevention, residential fire safety for preschool age children, and poisoning prevention. It is important to note that one of the innovative aspects of this program is that it can be applied to virtually any public health issue, depending on community needs. This practice differs from other approaches in two primary ways: 1) Leveraged funding for unintentional injury prevention – a chronically underfunded issue – by serving as a funding intermediary between a local foundation and the community. Not only did the program receive approximately $300,000 over three and a half years to serve in this coordinating agency capacity, but it also channeled nearly $1 million over a three-year period into injury prevention programming in the community. 2) Used the agency's technical assistance role specifically to increase community capacity to use data to evaluate, improve and sustain their programs beyond the grant period. It was innovative for program staff to step out of the role of program provision and focus the work on helping other agencies maximize their opportunities to implement, evaluate and sustain their programming. More commonly, technical assistance provided by a local health department to a community organization is usually related to program implementation – not data use, program evaluation and sustainability.
Sustainability:	One of the primary goals of this practice is to provide partners with the skills they need to sustain their activities beyond the scope of the grant. At the end of the grant, all seven grantees had plans in place to sustain all or part of their injury prevention activities beyond the grant period. Tri-County Health Department’s efforts in this initiative were successful. The program has managed to secure another grant from the same funding agency to partner with several of the grantees from the original initiative. The new project will focus work on strengthening the public health infrastructure around the specific injury area of older adult fall prevention. This is a five-year project with the potential of an additional $180,000 for this area. This will result in more partners joining the effort and an unknown additional amount of resources leveraged for prevention.
Lessons Learned:

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