Fighting Back communities are answering the following explicit questions in their quest for the Fighting Back goal of significant reductions in their most serious substance abuse problems:
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What is the Fighting Back strategy to mobilize the community? Why will it be effective? How will you sustain the strategy over time, or change it if the ground shifts under you?
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What are the most important substance abuse problems in your community? What measures tell you that the problems you select are important?
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What specific programs, policies, mobilizations or additional actions must you and others take to address the most important issues?
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What other institutions and leaders in the community must be involved? How will you get their cooperation?
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How will you know whether or not your focus remains correct and your efforts are achieving the expected results? Who will collect and analyze this information? How will it be used to improve your efforts?
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What governance structure will you establish to achieve your strategy and assure mutual accountability, and continuing community and financial support? What mechanisms will be in place to insure public review and reporting about the strategy and about changes in the community that may affect the priorities, tactics, and activities?
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How will you train, incent, and mobilize current and future leaders, workers, and volunteers?
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The tasks before these communities and the nation are enormous. Substance abuse is a topic with stigma, and with tremendous economic, political, social, and moral entanglements. It is also the country's number one preventable public health problem. "The Fighting Back Project will test the community's will to rise above divisiveness, competition, and conflict, to achieve greater health, safety, and productivity for all its citizens." *
*Substance Abuse: The Nation's Number One Health Problem, Key Indicators for Policy, prepared by the Institute for Health Policy, Brandeis University, for the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, October, 1993
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