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How Colorado’s Opioid Settlement Funds will be Distributed and Used

This video explains how Colorado plans to distribute opioid settlement funds through a statewide agreement that allocates money over 18 years across local governments, 19 regional councils, and smaller shares for infrastructure and statewide initiatives. The discussion outlines “allowable uses” for the funds—prevention/education, treatment and recovery supports, harm reduction (e.g., naloxone), and criminal justice–related diversion and continuity of care—with an emphasis on avoiding duplication and addressing distinct rural versus urban needs (including workforce and access gaps). It also describes governance, transparency, and safeguards intended to keep funds dedicated to opioid abatement, including required regional plans, public reporting via a dashboard, and structural protections designed to prevent diversion of funds to unrelated uses. For communities outside Colorado, the approach offers a concrete model for building regional governance, setting spending guardrails, and balancing state-level coordination with local decision-making when distributing opioid settlement resources.

Project Management: Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, Informed (RACI) Diagram

Any small and large project involves multiple individuals and stakeholders. It is extremely important in managing tasks across the project life cycle to define which individuals/stakeholders are Responsible, Accountable, Consulted, and Informed (RACI). A RACI Diagram or RACI Matrix can assist program managers in identifying who needs to be involved and how they are involved. You can view this video for an overview of RACI Diagrams.

The Peer Review Process.

This video explains the peer review process for prevention programs, which is a quality control process that involves careful review of scholarly and academic work. Experts with knowledge and experience in the same field as the prevention program that is being reviewed will scrutinize the research, ideas, methods, and outcomes of the program to ensure that the research has occurred according to professional standards. These experts also ensure that the program outcomes may be reproduced in other similar contexts and conditions. Then, a publication is produced with the findings which is also referred to as a scholarly publication. To learn more about the Peer Review Process, please view the YouTube video.

The Do’s and Don’ts of Community Program Evaluations.

This video introduces a discussion on the do’s and don’ts of community prevention program evaluation, emphasizing that strong evaluations are collaborative – grounded in shared logic models, clear goals/objectives, and trust between implementers and evaluators. The guest explains key tradeoffs between in-house and external evaluation (e.g., local context knowledge vs. objectivity/credibility) and underscores why process evaluation (implementation/fidelity) is essential before drawing conclusions about outcomes. The conversation also highlights practical guidance such as using validated measures, planning for dissemination, and evaluating adaptations to ensure programs are effective (and not inadvertently harmful).

Contact

Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development
University of Colorado Boulder
Institute of Behavioral Science
UCB 483, Boulder, CO 80309

Email: blueprints@colorado.edu

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Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development is currently funded by the United States Office of National Drug Control Policy and historically has received funding from Arnold Ventures, the Annie E. Casey Foundation, and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.