Voices from the Field
As part of the Strengthening and Sustaining Ohio’s Suicide Prevention Coalitions (SSOSPC) Initiative, seventeen suicide prevention coalitions across Ohio received funding in 2020 to conduct a Community Readiness Assessment. As part of the assessment process, each funded coalition studied community readiness and how to assess it, conducted interviews with key members of their local community, and then analyzed and reported on their findings from the interviews. To support this process, coalitions engaged in the CRA Training Series created by Ohio University’s Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs and the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation, as well as learning community meetings and wrap-around support sessions.
Community Readiness Assessment: Summary Video
We asked coalition members who participated in the first CRA cohort to reflect on the process. Here’s what they had to say.
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Introduction
The Strengthening and Sustaining Ohio’s Suicide Prevention Coalitions (SSOSPC) Initiative provides grantees the opportunity to conduct a Community Readiness Assessment (CRA). Community readiness assessments help communities understand how ready a community is to address an issue that is impacting the health of the community. In addition, community readiness assessments help communities match interventions to the community’s level of readiness, thereby facilitating success. The assessment is part of the Tri-Ethnic Community Readiness Model developed by the Tri-Ethnic Center for Prevention Research at Colorado State University. To support coalitions as they conduct their CRA, Ohio University’s Voinovich School of Leadership and Public Affairs and the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation developed a web-based training series. The training series is broken down into segments that provide informational videos, guidance documents, and handouts for each step of the CRA process.
Segment 1: Introduction to Community Readiness and the Community Readiness Assessment
Segment 1 introduces community readiness as an important construct for and provides an overview of how to assess community readiness.
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Supporting Materials
Assessing Community Readiness
Segment 2: Value Proposition for the CRA
Segment 2 discusses why coalitions and communities should assess community readiness and creates a value proposition for the community readiness assessment.
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Segment 3: Tools and Key Components of the CRA
Segment 3 takes a deeper dive into conducting a community readiness assessment and provides resources to assist with completing a community readiness assessment.
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Segment 4: Forming the CRA Team
Segment 4 focuses on roles needed to complete a CRA and on forming a CRA team. The segment highlights resources and training opportunities.
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Conducting Interviews
Segment 5: Basics of Conducting CRA Interviews
Segment 5 provides details on how to conduct community readiness interviews.
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Segment 6: Deciding Who to Interview and Engaging Their Participation
Segment 6 focuses on identifying key informants for community readiness interviews and on engaging them in community readiness interviews.
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Segment 7: Conducting CRA Interviews
Segment 7 provides additional details on how to conduct community readiness interviews, with a special focus on providing interviewers with the knowledge and tools needed to successfully conduct community readiness interviews.
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Segment 8: Transcribing CRA Interviews
Segment 8 provides details on transcription options and introduces Otter.ai as a transcription option.
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Scoring
Segment 9: Scoring Interviews
Segment 9 introduces the scoring process for the Community Readiness Model and provides details on how to score community readiness interviews. This training segment is relevant to the work of CRA scorers and to the project manager.
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Segment 10: Calculating Dimension-Specific and Overall Scores
Segment 10 is the second part of the scoring training for the Community Readiness Model. This segment focuses on calculating overall and average dimension scores and is designed to give project managers what they need once the CRA scorers have completed their work.
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Reporting & Results
Segment 11: Reporting CRA Results for SSOSPC-Funded Coalitions
Segment 11 focuses on creating community readiness assessment reports. This provides details on the reporting process for suicide prevention coalitions that are participating in the Strengthening and Sustaining Ohio’s Suicide Prevention Coalitions (SSOSPC) Initiative.
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Supporting Materials
Increasing Community Readiness
Segment 12: Strategies for Building Community Readiness
Segment 12 focuses on supporting coalitions participating in the Strengthening and Sustaining Ohio’s Suicide Prevention Coalitions (SSOSPC) Initiative in identifying strategies to build community readiness. This provides details on how to select strategies and approaches to build community readiness, as well as the planning tools for the SSOSPC Initiative.
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Supporting Materials
Conducting Interviews in Spanish
Using Spanish-language CRA Interview Materials
The materials in this section include an interviewee introduction and a CRA interview guide in Spanish. At this time, there is not a full CRA training series in Spanish and as such we currently are not able to support a full Spanish language CRA. However, these materials are designed to support bilingual individuals in conducting CRA interviews with key informants and community stakeholders who only speak Spanish or whose preferred language is Spanish.
Materials
Uso de materiales de entrevistas CRA en español
Los materiales de esta sección incluyen una introducción del entrevistado y una guía de entrevista CRA en español. En este momento, no hay una serie completa de capacitación CRA en español y como tal no somos capaces de apoyar actualmente un CRA completo en español. Sin embargo, estos materiales están diseñados para apoyar a las personas bilingües en la realización de entrevistas CRA con informantes clave y partes interesadas de la comunidad que sólo hablan español o cuyo idioma preferido es el español.
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Frequently Asked Questions
This page will include all FAQ documents related to the Community Readiness Assessment (CRA) for the Strengthening and Sustaining Ohio’s Suicide Prevention Coalitions (SSOSPC) Initiative.
Completed CRA Reports and Plans
Each coalition participating in the Strengthening and Sustaining Ohio’s Suicide Prevention Coalitions (SSOSPC) Initiative conducted a Community Readiness Assessment (CRA) and developed a plan to build community readiness. The map below includes the 17 suicide prevention coalitions (represented by county) that were funded in 2020. To view each coalition’s final report and plan, click on the corresponding county in the map below.
