LDF-PSF Community Readiness Interviews

As part of the PSF-SAMSHA Grant, LDF-PSF program staff will assess the community’s readiness to prevent the misuse of alcohol, opiates, and methamphetamine. To do so, we will interview community members using the Tri-Ethnic Community Readiness for Community Change interview.

Background and Purpose of the Tri-Ethnic Community Readiness for Community Change

Community readiness is the degree to which a community is willing and prepared to take action on an issue.  The Community Readiness Model was developed by researchers at the Tri-Ethnic Center for Prevention Research (Oetting, Donnermeyer, Plested, Edwards, Kelly, and Beauvais, 1995) to help communities be more successful in their efforts to address a variety of issues, such as drug and alcohol use and HIV/AIDs prevention.

Benefits of Using the Community Readiness Model:

The Community Readiness Model (CRM) can help a community move forward and be more successful in its efforts to change in a variety of ways.  Some of these include:

• measuring a community’s readiness levels on several dimensions that will help diagnose where we need to put our initial efforts.

• helping to identify our community’s weaknesses and strengths, and the obstacles we are likely to meet as we move forward.

• pointing to appropriate actions that match our community’s readiness levels.

• working within our community’s culture to come up with actions that are right for our community.

• aiding in securing funding, cooperating with other organizations, working with leadership, and more.

Each interview will take between 45 minutes and an hour. Interviewees will be compensated with a $40 gift card to the Ojibwe Market for participating. Participants’ identities will not be tied to their input. Results from the interviews will be combined and used inform future prevention activities.