Drug Free Communities Support Program National Evaluation
Revision of a currently approved collection
No
Regular
Approved without change
02/02/2023
11/28/2022
table that charts list comparision
Inventory as of this Action
Requested
Previously Approved
02/28/2026
36 Months From Approved
02/28/2023
10,035
0
1,495
364,243
0
9,833
0
0
0
The current package reflects a request for revisions to the 2019 previously approved collection pertaining to the Drug Free Communities Support Program (DFC) and the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) Local Drug Crises Grants program.
DFC was created by the Drug Free Communities Act of 1997 (Public Law (P.L. 105-20) and was recently reauthorized again by the SUPPORT Act (P.L. 115-271). Most recently, P.L. 116-74 (2019), updated language in the law (ONDCP Technical Corrections Act of 2019). The DFC authorizing statute (21 USC §§ 1521â1536) provides that community-based coalitions addressing youth substance use can receive Federal grant funds and that the amount of each DFC grant award shall not exceed $125,000 annually. The Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (CARA) Local Drug Crises Grants program was created by the Comprehensive Addiction and Recovery Act (P.L. 114-198) as a follow-on grant program for DFC recipients. ONDCP, the lead agency for setting U.S. drug control policy and strategy, provides funding through the DFC Program to build community capacity for preventing and reducing substance abuse among our nationâs youth.
ONDCP directs both the DFC and CARA Programs. Since October 2020, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) National Center for Injury Prevention & Control (NCIPC) provides Government Project Officers (GPO) and grants management support to the grant award recipients. Both ONDCP and GPO contributed to the current OMB packet.
DFC has two primary goals: to prevent and reduce youth substance use and to support community coalitions in building capacity to address youth substance use. These goals are addressed by establishing, strengthening, and fostering collaboration among public and private non-profit agencies, as well as Federal, State, local, and tribal governments. As a follow-on to DFC, the CARA grant recipients have similar goals, although with a narrower focus on prevention/reduction in youth substance use of opioids and methamphetamine.
Specifically, CARA goals are to enhance the ability of established (current or former DFC program recipients) community organizations to create community-level change to prevent or reduce use of opioids, methamphetamine, and/or prescription drugs (misuse) among youth ages 12-18 and to change the culture and context regarding the acceptability of youth use and misuse of these substances through implementation of a comprehensive community-wide action plan. Ideally both grant programs empower community coalitions to become self-sufficient.
The current request pertains to revisions to the DFC & CARA progress reports while the case study protocols and the DFC Coalition Classification Tool (CCT) are largely unchanged. These changes have been determined necessary to facilitate the monitoring and tracking of grant recipient progress while simultaneously improving the quality of data and keeping grant recipient burden to a minimum.
The changes identified here for the DFC Progress Report are anticipated to increase burden, although this may be alleviated by reducing reporting to a single annual report. Most notably, coalitions will need to make specific linkages between their implementation of activities and their action plans (i.e., to specific action plan goal/strategy/activity). This will take attention to detail and burden will be higher the more activities a coalition has implemented and/or the larger the number of goals/strategies/activities they have in their action plan. In addition, the diversity and health equity and risk and protective factors sections both have grown significantly. While coalitions should be aware of how to answer these items, it will take additional time to do so. The number of open text items continued to grow in this report, although only a small number of additional fields were added. Some DFC recipients have noted that burden was higher than expected OMB burden, in part due to wanting to tell their stories effectively and in part due to waiting until the end of the period to document activities. Occasionally, transitions in key personnel also impacts burden as new key personnel work to collect data from times when they were not in the role. Our prior estimates were based on coalitions spending approximately 1 hour per month on progress reporting, with some additional time for final edits and review prior to submission. Based on the feedback and the changes, including the shift to a single annual report, we are now estimating burden for the DFC Annual Progress report to be 24 hours. Ideally, coalitions will still spend approximately 1 hour per month on recording ongoing efforts followed by additional year end time to complete and submit the reports. Coalitions who make these efforts will reduce burden occurring all at once, but that is a local decision. Burden will likely be lower for new Year 1 recipients who will report on only six months of effort in their first year, however we have retained the burden estimate for these coalitions as they will be new to the process. The progress report burden includes core measure data collection and reporting burden, although that is only required to occur every two years. The core measures burden is associated with 4 of the 24 hours, although building relationships with the school, parent, and youth sectors participating in the surveys are also part of the ongoing work of coalitions to build capacity.
The CARA recipients will be expected to complete a separate progress report, even if they have current DFC funding. Given the much shorter report they complete, mostly indicating yes/no to a range of activities and then describing their work to address opioids/methamphetamine in detail. The anticipated level of burden for the CARA report is not expected to exceed 10 hours annually, including time for core measures data collection at least every two years.
For DFC recipients, the annual CCT burden will be approximately two hours annually (an increase from one hour in the prior OMB submission). While most DFC coalitions did not report challenges with completing the CCT in one hour, a small number of coalitions felt that to be thoughtful it took somewhat longer, although not longer than two hours. The burden change reflects this concern.
Typically, site visits, whether in-person or virtual, take place over 1-2 days (8-12 hours across a range of participants from the coalition) as well as up to 2 hours for planning the visit. Communities of practice focus groups will take place during 1-3 hour virtual meetings, depending on the topic area. If agreed on by participants, focus groups may also occur during national meetings regularly attended by coalition key personnel. The burden estimates for Progress Reports, the CCT, and the Case Study Interviews are presented in the table below using the 745 FY 2021 DFC grant recipients as number of respondents and the 65 FY 2021 CARA recipients. In
On behalf of this Federal agency, I certify that the collection of information encompassed by this request complies with 5 CFR 1320.9 and the related provisions of 5 CFR 1320.8(b)(3).
The following is a summary of the topics, regarding the proposed collection of information, that the certification covers:
(i) Why the information is being collected;
(ii) Use of information;
(iii) Burden estimate;
(iv) Nature of response (voluntary, required for a benefit, or mandatory);
(v) Nature and extent of confidentiality; and
(vi) Need to display currently valid OMB control number;
If you are unable to certify compliance with any of these provisions, identify the item by leaving the box unchecked and explain the reason in the Supporting Statement.
Form Attachment 4_Propo Attachment 4_Proposed Revisions to DFC Progress Report Core Measures_2022
ATTACHMENT 12 Federal Register Notices.pdf
Attachment 11_Data Sharing Request Form_FOIA_2022_AUG25.docx
Attachment 5_CCT_2019_Aug6_v2.doc
DFC PRA NOVEMBER 2022