Thank you for joining OMNI Institute at the Annual Mental Health & Substance Use Recovery Conference! Learn more about our two presentations SPF Up Your Prevention Planning: Successful Approaches from Virginia and Colorado and Values-Driven Evaluation: How to Meaningfully Demonstrate the Unique Impact of Peer Recovery Services below.

Questions about what you’ve heard today? Contact one of our presenters or visit our Contact Page.

SPF Up Your Prevention Planning: Successful Approaches from Virginia and Colorado

Wednesday, October 27 | 10:00 a.m. – 11:30 a.m. (CST)

SESSION DESCRIPTION:

Prevention specialists do important work in our communities – and evaluation can strengthen those efforts by being intentional and thoughtful. Utilizing SAMHSA's Strategic Prevention Framework (SPF) can increase the success of prevention services, and help organizations adapt to changing environments and communities. The SPF helps us to understand what issues are important in the community, and more importantly what issues the community is ready to address. This helps to move our prevention planning and implementation work forward. Focusing on the SPF steps of assessment, capacity, planning and evaluation, staff will provide real-life examples from their work with Virginia and Colorado. This will include discussing how organizations and coalitions assessed their communities needs and readiness, strengthened core supports, and told the story of their impact through evaluation. Implementing the SPF also allowed for many agencies to better serve traditionally marginalized communities and approach their prevention work from an equity lens.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

1. Participants will receive tangible, adaptable tools for planning and evaluating community work, for example coalition capacity assessment.

2. Participants will learn how to create evaluation roadmaps and implement the SPF model.

3. Participants will learn the importance of getting different stakeholders involved (ex. directors, community members, policy makers, etc.).

MEET OUR SPEAKERS:

Kate Rifken, M.S., (she/her) Research Manager, OMNI Institute, Denver, CO | krifken@omni.org
Kate is passionate about exciting stakeholders to use data for storytelling. She has experience in mental health and substance use evaluation as well as data visualization. Kate previously working at the Department of Health Services in Wisconsin working with counties and communities to evaluate substance use treatment services. Prior to that, Kate has worked on mental health and substance use research for veterans at the VA Hospital, as well as meditation and mindfulness research studies. Kate understands that traditional metrics do not always tell the full story and is committed to working in partnership with communities to help them grow and build capacity for planning and evaluation work.

Jason Wheeler, Ph.D., (he/him) Researcher, OMNI Institute, Ridgefield, WA | jwheeler@omni.org
Jason has formal education and training in Prevention Science, which focuses on the fundamentals of generating research on risk and protective factors for mental, emotional, or behavioral disorders and translating that research into effective prevention programs. His training includes aspects of prevention program development, such as planning and implementation of programs into communities, and using data sources to measure their effectiveness.

T. Schweimler, M.A., (they/them) Researcher, OMNI Institute, Denver, CO | tschweimler@omni.org
T previously served as the Program Engagement Coordinator for Rainbow Alley, The Center on Colfax's program serving LGBTQ+ youth ages 11-21, facilitating outreach and education activities across Colorado and providing support services and crisis counseling for at-risk youth. They spent several years working with an equitable transit collaborative supporting the efforts of community stakeholders and collaborating partners in addressing transit equity and accessibility of health, education, housing, and employment for low-income and communities of color in Denver. At OMNI, T works on projects including a statewide survey assessing behavioral health of LGBTQ+ Coloradans, the Colorado Statewide Needs Assessment, and Colorado HIV/AIDS Strategy, and providing technical assistance and evaluation support for substance use prevention programs in the Commonwealth of Virginia and state of Alabama. They have 10+ years of community organizing in diverse and marginalized communities with a particular emphasis on working in LGBTQ+ and low-income communities & communities of color.

PRESENTATION RESOURCES

Presentation Slides

Values-Driven Evaluation: How to Meaningfully Demonstrate the Unique Impact of Peer Recovery Services

Wednesday, October 27 | 12:30 p.m. – 2:00 p.m. (CST)

SESSION DESCRIPTION:

Those who have witnessed the work of peer recovery supporters often speak of the increased engagement, empowerment, and hopefulness experienced by the individuals they work with. Evidence supporting the efficacy of peer recovery services is growing exponentially; however, demonstrating the value of these life-changing services can be challenging for even the most committed peer supporters and program administrators. Beginning in 2019, the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services (DBHDS) in collaboration with OMNI Institute, utilized State Opioid Response (SOR) Grant funding to research and implement a standardized way to evaluate peer recovery services across a wide range of programs and service settings.

In this workshop, attendees will explore values-driven evaluation of peer recovery services by identifying potential benefits and challenges specific to their program or agency. Attendees will receive guidance about recommended peer outcomes and corresponding tools, and learn tangible skills to implement thoughtful yet feasible outcomes measurement while overcoming common challenges. The presenters, along with a Virginia-based Peer Recovery Specialist, will reflect on their first-hand experience implementing peer-specific outcomes evaluation and share successes and lessons learned. Finally, practical recommendations and guiding questions will be shared to support attendees in taking steps toward demonstrating the impact of their own peer recovery programs and services. This workshop is intended for peer supporters, program administrators, and all others who are passionate about demonstrating and sharing the positive impact of peer recovery services.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES:

Participants will understand the benefits and common challenges of measuring the impact of peer recovery services.
Participants will have a realistic understanding of the steps in the evaluation process based on the experiences of an administrator and a Peer Recovery Specialist who have implemented values-driven evaluation of peer recovery services.
Participants will be able to identify tools to begin to demonstrate the impact of peer recovery services in their specific program or agency.

MEET OUR SPEAKER:

Jenna Lee Mathews, MSW, (she/her) Research Manager, OMNI Institute,
Denver, CO | jmathews@omni.org
Jenna is a Licensed Clinical Social Worker and behavioral health researcher with OMNI Institute, a social science research and evaluation consultancy based in Denver, Colorado. As OMNI’s lead researcher for Virginia’s State Opioid Response (SOR) Grant recovery work, she supports the evaluation of peer recovery services implementation across a broad range of settings, including community mental health, emergency departments, collegiate recovery, and justice system programs and facilities. Her background as a trauma-focused therapist informs her current work developing practical evaluation strategies that demonstrate the impact of behavioral health interventions. Jenna believes in the power of inquiry, authenticity, and connection to move individuals and communities towards healing and wellness.

Angela Weight (she/her), State Opioid Response (SOR) Grant Recovery Services Coordinator for the Virginia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Services
In this role, Angela is instrumental in expanding peer recovery services in settings such as medication assisted treatment programs, hospital emergency departments, college campuses, drug/recovery courts and other justice-related environments. As a person in long-term recovery from substance use disorder, Angela is passionate about promoting authentic person-to-person connections to eliminate barriers to recovery.

Jenna and Angela collaborate closely in the monitoring and evaluation of substance use disorder recovery activities provided as part of Virginia’s State Opioid Response grant. Their shared passion for demonstrating the powerful impact of peer recovery services inspires them to share their experience and lessons learned to support conference attendees in similar efforts.

PRESENTATION RESOURCES