Several factors influence a program’s ability to last over time, including:

• Funding and Financial Support: Securing long-term funding sources.^2,3
• Community Alignment: Ensuring the program meets community needs and values.
• Collaborations & Networks: Building strong partnerships with coalitions and stakeholders.⁴
• Infrastructure & Capacity: Ensuring resources, staff, and technology are in place.
• Leadership Support: Engaging leaders and other champions who promote program sustainment.
• Evaluation & Evidence: Measuring both the program’s impact and its ability to continue.¹

The likelihood of sustainment can be increased by the following steps:

• Identify Barriers and Facilitators to Successful Sustainment: Factors influencing sustainment (barriers and facilitators) can be measured through several validated and reliable instruments such as the Program Assessment of Sustainability Tool (PSAT)⁵ and the Sustainment Measurement System Scale (SMSS).¹ 
• Develop a Sustainment Action Plan: A Sustainment Action Plan documents efforts being made to ensure that an effective program or practice can be successfully sustained into the future and/or beyond the duration of initial funding (if funded through a grant). Such plans should be feasible, acceptable and appropriate. Developing a Sustainment Action Plan includes use of a logic model that could consist of identifying barriers and facilitators to successful sustainment of an effective program or practice, choosing one or more strategies to address the barriers, and selecting outcomes to be assessed in determining whether strategies were successful in achieving continued used of the program/practice.
• Monitor the Process of Sustainability: Monitoring the process of sustainability is important for two reasons. First, it enables an organization to identify potential obstacles and opportunities for improving the likelihood of successful sustainment. Second, it offers evidence to a funder that progress is being made to ensure successful EBP sustainment post award (if needed). An organization should form a sustainment development team of agency staff and external experts to collect information on progress toward sustainment and then suggest revisions to Sustainability Support Plans to increase likelihood of successful sustainment outcomes.
• Evaluate Performance in Achieving Sustainability and Sustainment: To ensure that sustainability efforts have been successfully established and are operating to support continued use of the program/practice, organizations need to use valid and reliable measures of sustainment outcomes.