In September 2015, CARS celebrated the close of another three-year grant cycle as the TA Provider for the long-running Community Prevention Initiative (CPI). CPI is a Substance Use Disorder (SUD) prevention training and TA initiative funded by the California Department of Health Care Services to support California’s 58 County Alcohol and Other Drug (AOD) Offices, prevention providers, and partners. These partners include community-based organizations; coalitions; local and county offices of mental, behavioral, and public health; law enforcement; and state-level prevention councils and groups. CPI supports TTA recipients in a wide array of prevention planning, implementation, and evaluation activities.
CARS has been the TA Provider for the Community Prevention Initiative since its inception in 2003, and has worked with the SUD prevention field in a similar capacity for close to two decades. In this time, CPI has created a variety of groundbreaking publications, training curricula, and professional development opportunities for the workforce.
On the CPI project, CARS is committed to delivering innovative products and services that are grounded in prevention best practices, frameworks, and trends. CPI issued the first large-scale survey of the California prevention workforce to assess its capacity and demographics, and continually captures ongoing workforce data through periodic re-administration of the survey. This data is used in the development of CPI’s highly popular Professional Competency curricula, which provide the SUD prevention workforce and those in adjacent fields with critical prevention knowledge, skills, and abilities. In addition to its many research-based and practical products, CPI has created dozens of opportunities for networking and peer knowledge transfer by hosting convenings of the field. CARS also represents CPI in statewide and regional collaborations and meetings to promote the role of SUD prevention in furthering the health of all Californians.
CARS has been awarded the TA Provider contract for the 2015-2017 grant cycle.
