This Alternative Community Events Framework (ACE) Strategy Development and Implementation Manual is both an in-depth, applied training resource and a practical guide designed to empower prevention specialists, community organizers, and youth advocates with the tools they need to design, deliver, and evaluate engaging, positive activities that strengthen community wellness. ACE plays a key role in comprehensive prevention efforts, offering fun and meaningful alternatives to risky behaviors while supporting wellness-related norms and behavioral adoption by addressing community risk and protective factors.
The origin of alternatives as part of prevention strategies is deeply rooted in the nation’s history of substance abuse prevention efforts. The Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Mental Health Administration (ADAMHA) was established in 1973 to centralize federal efforts on substance abuse and mental health. Later, the Office of Substance Abuse Prevention (OSAP), created in 1986, spearheaded initiatives that evolved into the Six Core Strategies for community prevention. In 1992, the ADAMHA Reorganization Act restructured ADAMHA, establishing the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) from OSAP. CSAP integrated these core strategies into the Substance Abuse Prevention and Treatment Block Grant to help states implement effective, evidence-based prevention activities (Public Health Service Act, 1992). The Six Core Strategies are designed to align closely with the diffusion of innovation model, which explains how new ideas and practices spread through a population. CSAP’s strategies reflect the steps in the diffusion process, from introducing new ideas to fostering community-wide adoption, and can be seen reflected in the intentional ACE Framework design:
Information Dissemination reduces uncertainty by presenting crucial knowledge to the community, the first step in the diffusion process. This strategy sets the stage for further exploration and eventual acceptance by providing foundational awareness about substance use risks and prevention benefits.
Prevention Education builds on this by offering deeper learning and engaging credible community members as trusted sources of information. In the diffusion model, individuals seek guidance from respected opinion leaders before adopting new behaviors. This strategy ensures that communities have the resources to not only learn but to evaluate and apply prevention methods.
Alternative Activities provide tangible, positive options for community members, offering clear benefits that make it easier for individuals to adopt healthier behaviors. As people experience these activities and observe peers participating, the social proof and rewards from credible sources accelerate the adoption process.
Problem Identification and Referral reinforces social norms around prevention. By identifying those at risk and referring them to appropriate resources, this strategy helps create an environment where prevention behaviors are reinforced and supported within the community, aligning with social pressure and the need for collective behavior change.
Community-Based Processes foster the collective involvement necessary for new practices to become part of a community’s social fabric. This strategy ensures that prevention efforts are sustained through local ownership and adaptation, helping integrate new practices into existing structures and ensuring long-term impact.
Environmental Approaches target broader social, economic, and political factors, shaping the context in which community members operate. By influencing policies, laws, and norms, this strategy creates a supportive backdrop for prevention efforts, making it easier for individuals to adopt and maintain new behaviors.
When alternative activities as a prevention strategy are layered with information dissemination, intentional integration of education and skill development activities, social marketing or norms campaigns, and adjunct policy change, they create a strong, aligned array of prevention approaches. This combination of strategies works together to drive meaningful and lasting community change by addressing multiple layers of influence, from individual choices to societal systems (Dearing, 2009).
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As such, the ACE Framework, to maximize outcomes, should include a call to action or social norms campaign element that reinforces targeted protective factors or addresses prioritized risk factors. By offering appealing alternatives, this strategy contributes to the reduction of substance use rates, promote pro-social behaviors, supports mental health promotion or stigma reduction initiatives, and fosters positive community engagement across various age groups.
In addition to ensuring alignment and layering with the CSAP Six Core Strategies, the ACE approach is grounded in the Social Development Strategy (Catalano, Hawkins, Berglund, Pollard, & Arthur, 2002; Haggarty, & McCowan, 2018) which emphasizes that fostering strong, positive bonds between individuals and their families, schools, and communities through intentional actions, activities, and interventions within key domains—community, family, school, and individual-peer levels—where clear, positive community norms and opportunities for skill-building promote healthy behavior, creating a protective environment that reduces the likelihood of problem behaviors. The Prevention Insights ACE framework leverages the Social Development Strategy with the CSAP Core Strategies on a foundation of Alternative Activities by offering a structured platform for positive reinforcement and skill development in healthy or otherwise substance-free environments . , which enables evaluation and fidelity data collection to be able to demonstrate local impact and return on investment for prevention resources.
The ACE framework provides a comprehensive process for designing, implementing, and evaluating Alternative Community Events (ACE), with a focus on skill-building and best practices. It supports implementers by enhancing their capacity to apply both the theoretical principles and practical processes involved. This is achieved through hands-on activities and worksheets designed to tailor the framework to specific local contexts, while maintaining fidelity to the core design.
ACE is a versatile public health community-change approach that can be applied to various populations, settings, and issues—whether addressing wellness, prevention, or mental health promotion. It is flexible enough to be integrated into diverse environments, such as entire communities, school districts, faith groups, or workplaces. Although the examples in this manual may focus on a particular issue or priority, the core processes outlined here, along with the necessary skills, planning guidance, and fidelity requirements, can be adapted to suit any specific context or need. The ACE approach is also designed to be aligned with the SAMHSA strategic priorities and guiding principles. The Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) 2023–2026 Strategic Plan outlines five priority areas to address behavioral health needs: preventing substance use and overdose, enhancing access to mental health and suicide prevention services, promoting emotional health and resilience for children, youth, and families, integrating behavioral and physical health care, and strengthening the behavioral health workforce. Additionally, the plan incorporates guiding principles that are essential for community prevention efforts. These principles include equity, which ensures fair and just access to resources and opportunities for all community members, particularly those who are underserved or marginalized; trauma-informed approaches, which recognize and respond to the impact of trauma on individuals and communities, fostering a safer and more supportive environment; recovery, which supports individuals in their journey to overcome substance use and mental health challenges, promoting hope and resilience; and a commitment to data and evidence, which utilizes data-driven and evidence-based strategies to inform and evaluate prevention programs, ensuring their effectiveness and continuous improvement based on the latest research and best practices. Incorporating these guiding principles into community prevention efforts ensures that programs are inclusive, compassionate, and effective, ultimately leading to healthier and more resilient communities.
In the following sections of the ACE Implementation Manual, we provide an overview of the theoretical framework, its alignment with evidence-based public health strategies, and research-driven methodologies. In later sections, you’ll find worksheets to help you reflect, plan, and apply these concepts to your community transformation efforts by weaving in the Strategic Prevention Framework and the engagement of the 12 Community Sectors.
