Wisconsin State Incentive Grant (SIG)

Wisconsin State Incentive Grant (SIG) Photo of youth smiling

The purpose of the SIG Program is to change State and local community prevention systems in order to more substantially impact adolescent substance abuse rates. The focus on youth is grounded in public health, since substance use is linked to many negative long-term, health- and behavior-related outcomes. The SIG program provides funding to States to increase the capacity and effectiveness of State prevention systems to respond to the critical problems of substance abuse nationwide.

The SIG Program provides a unique opportunity for the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) to work collaboratively with Governors and State agencies on several fronts to:

Develop comprehensive Statewide substance abuse prevention strategic plans that coordinate substance abuse prevention across different levels of infrastructure (community, region and State), and between state entities;
Encourage and stimulate identification, leveraging and/or redirection of funding among State agencies, and out to local communities;
Enhance State and local capacity to develop and implement science-based prevention efforts; and
Link drug prevention with related state efforts to improve the well-being of children and youths more generally.

Eighty-five percent of each grant (approximately $2.5 million a year for three years) is used to implement community-oriented, evidence-based prevention practices to fill gaps in critical prevention services. The remaining 15 percent of SIG funds support development of a revitalized, comprehensive, state prevention plan, making use of all federal and state prevention funding streams to provide coordinated and integrated prevention services across the state. This process allows states to address the needs of individual communities while enhancing the availability of, and accessibility to, state-of-the-art substance abuse prevention services.

The SIGs call upon governors to develop and implement a comprehensive statewide substance abuse prevention strategy to optimize the use of all state and federal substance abuse prevention funding streams and resources. SIGs are funded as cooperative agreements -- rather than grants -- between states and the federal government, because of the important roles each has in ensuring the success of the SIGs.

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