Strategic Planning
While the overall goal of Project LAUNCH is to promote young child wellness, each Project LAUNCH grantee’s approach is shaped by the needs, strengths, and resources in his or her state/tribe and community. By engaging colleagues and key stakeholders in a collaborative process to determine the mission, vision, values, and broad overall goals and objectives of their project, Project LAUNCH leaders use their strategic planning process to develop strategies for promoting young child wellness immediately in the target community and to use lessons from that community’s interventions to shape policy, regulation, and programming that will strengthen the child wellness efforts throughout the state or tribe.
Just as the needs assessment conducted during the Project LAUNCH grant development process is the precursor of a complete environmental scan, the grant application’s goals and objectives lay the groundwork for the strategic plan. In the first year, state, tribal, local, and the District of Columbia Project LAUNCH coordinators, staff, and child wellness councils engage in a comprehensive strategic planning process in which they:
- Conduct an analysis of the environmental scan data
- Articulate the mission, vision, and values that will guide their work together
- Revisit and revise the goals and objectives included in their proposal
- Refine their logic model, including outcomes and indicators
- Identify strategies that will promote long-term systems change
- Plan for ways to sustain services after the grant ends
- Identify priorities and action steps for moving forward
States/tribes who were funded as Project LAUNCH grantees developed state/tribal level and community level strategic plans in the first year and revisit them in subsequent years. Grantees funded in 2010 develop a community level strategic plan, with input from state early childhood leaders.
For more information on Project LAUNCH’s approach to strategic planning, read SAMHSA’s Project LAUNCH—Strategic Planning Guidance document.
