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SPF-SIG Home > About the SPF-SIG > Prevention Centers of Excellence

Prevention Centers of Excellence

The State of Maine Office of Substance Abuse will provide funding to two Regional Prevention Centers of Excellence. One Center is located at the University of Maine in Orono which will primarily cover the northern half of Maine in providing assistance and resources to communities. The second Center is located at the University of Southern Maine, Muskie Center located in Portland and Augusta. USM will primarily cover the southern half of Maine. The following bullets detail the functions of both centers as well as highlights specific specialties of each.

Functions of both centers:

  • Provide technical assistance and facilitation/support for coalitions/agencies/ schools on a regional basis. At a minimum, this will focus on the needs and resources assessment and strategic planning, convening and building county-wide prevention infrastructure, implementation of evidence-based substance abuse prevention funded by OSA. TA may also include assistance with operational aspects of running programs as well: budgeting, grant writing; evaluation; recruitment and management of volunteers; coalition development; and community mobilization. Technical assistance provided will be consistent with the philosophy and information provided by the Northeast CAPT.
  • Assist with needs assessment and the development of prevention plans in underserved areas within each region. This involves assisting community strategic planning grantees with identifying “underserved” areas, supporting local organizations and individuals to work on needs and resources assessments, local organizing and program planning based on need. Centers will coordinate this work with the work of the SPF-SIG SEW and the Cultural Sub-populations Grantees. Centers will also administer some funding for strategic planning and needs and resources assessments to those Counties who were not at a stage of readiness to begin this process when initial strategic planning grants were released by OSA.
  • Work toward developing a self-sustaining and diversified funding base for the centers. It is the intention of the grant to provide the initial infrastructure to allow each center to develop the capacity to continue as a self-supporting entity. Grant writing is a key part of the process. Centers should begin in the first year to seek additional support for continuing their core functions and for conducting related research and evaluation projects.
  • Design, propose, and conduct academic research on substance abuse, prevention, and other inter-related issues. Through additional OSA funds “research awards” will be made to the centers for specific projects that will help move forward the field of substance abuse prevention. This aspect may also involve creating internships for students, providing supervised research opportunities for student theses or dissertations, providing data for methods classes to analyze, etc.

In addition to the functions above, each center also has a unique “specialty”:

University of Maine:

Conduct GIS mapping. To help in identifying infrastructure components already developed as well as possible gaps, and to help local and county partners strengthen their capacity to communicate effectively with their various stakeholders. This could include development of documents, and other resources to assist those working in community prevention to use data effectively, to publicize their efforts, to frame issues, and to advocate more effectively for the priority issues they are working on.

University of Southern Maine:

Develop a cross-disciplinary prevention workforce development system within the university system. This system would strengthen the substance abuse prevention workforce by establishing a system for those in the field to develop core competencies for prevention in general as well as specific skills/knowledge in particular categorical areas of prevention. In addition, this work should include development of a plan and curriculum to improve prevention-related and substance abuse-related education within the pre-service education and professional development of professionals in other relevant fields, such as teachers, counselors, social workers, primary health care providers, first responders, law enforcement, etc. They will develop a cross-disciplinary training curriculum (on child abuse, domestic violence, sexual assault, and substance abuse) proposed by the combined state-plan workgroup representing these four fields.