Toward a PROSPER State Partnership Network: Building Infrastructure and Capacity | Grant

IOWA STATE UNIVERSITY

Grant: $1,329,736 - National Institutes of Health - Sep. 30, 2009

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Award Description: Toward a PROSPER State Partnership Network: Building Infrastructure and Capacity The problem addressed is the lack of well-integrated infrastructure across public education systems to support sustained, quality implementation of evidence-based interventions (EBIs) in U.S. schools and communities—and the consequent limited public health impact from EBIs. While family and school-based EBIs exist that could substantially impact public health, these EBIs do not reach enough of the US population to have their intended impact. The need to address this problem is underscored by the 2009 Institute of Medicine report on Preventing Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders Among Young People, with its urgent call for research on the adoption of prevention programming into service systems '…which routinely involves the formation of partnerships and the development of an infrastructure (p.323). Public education delivery systems offer immense potential for scaling up EBIs for public health impact—they reach every community in the country—but there are major infrastructure- and capacity-related barriers to realizing the potential. The land grant university’s Cooperative Extension System (CES) is considered to be a highly successful system for translating science to practice in the U.S. It has a sophisticated set of TA systems utilizing community-based agents, including regional coordinators, program directors, and research-based CES faculty (Rogers, 2005). Yet, CES personnel often lack training in EBI implementation and other aspects of prevention (e.g., rigorous evaluation, implementation quality and sustainability). Further, they do not have adequate support to sustain EBIs. In addition, public schools often fail to implement EBIs effectively (Ennett et al., 2003). Schools also lack the expertise and personnel needed to integrate school-based prevention with family-focused prevention efforts (Adelman & Taylor, 2003); family-focused prevention requires active engagement of parents and others, as well as program expertise that can be provided by CES staff who function as change or 'linking agents (Molgaard,1997). Our proposed solution is to build capacity and partnership infrastructure in selected states to link the CES and public school systems with the goal of implementing the empirically-validated PROSPER State Partnership Model—to effectively deliver and sustain EBIs that reduce substance use and related problem behaviors. Toward this end, the proposed project will mobilize resources from state departments of health, education and juvenile justice, with the ultimate goal of creating a network of state partnerships. Findings from the PROSPER Model (Spoth and Greenberg, 2009) provide a glimpse of the positive outcomes that result from creating effective local linkages between CES, public schools, public health and community agencies. By creating such effective networks to increase quality implementation of EBIs, wide-scale implementation of the PROSPER model can significantly reduce youth problem behaviors and substance use in U.S. communities. The PROSPER Model has evolved through a series of NIH-funded, randomized prevention trials over two decades; most recently, through a randomized effectiveness trial in Iowa and Pennsylvania. PROSPER is a delivery system that uses state-based, public education partnerships to implement youth, family, and school-focused EBIs. Results have shown positive long-term effects on a wide range of substance-related outcomes. In addition, PROSPER’s universal EBIs administered during early adolescence (middle school) have shown positive longitudinal effects through young adulthood (e.g., Spoth, Clair et al., 2009; Spoth, Trudeau et al., in press), protecting youth from exposures to opportunities for engaging in health-risking behaviors, creating a so called 'protective shield (Spoth, Guyll, & Shin, in press).

Project Description: The problem addressed is the lack of well-integrated infrastructure across public education systems to support sustained, quality implementation of evidence-based interventions (EBIs) in U.S. schools and communities—and the consequent limited public health impact from EBIs. While family and school-based EBIs exist that could substantially impact public health, these EBIs do not reach enough of the US population to have their intended impact. The need to address this problem is underscored by the 2009 Institute of Medicine report on Preventing Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Disorders Among Young People, with its urgent call for research on the adoption of prevention programming into service systems '…which routinely involves the formation of partnerships and the development of an infrastructure (p.323). Public education delivery systems offer immense potential for scaling up EBIs for public health impact—they reach every community in the country—but there are major infrastructure- and capacity-related barriers to realizing the potential. The land grant university’s Cooperative Extension System (CES) is considered to be a highly successful system for translating science to practice in the U.S. It has a sophisticated set of TA systems utilizing community-based agents, including regional coordinators, program directors, and research-based CES faculty (Rogers, 2005). Yet, CES personnel often lack training in EBI implementation and other aspects of prevention (e.g., rigorous evaluation, implementation quality and sustainability). Further, they do not have adequate support to sustain EBIs. In addition, public schools often fail to implement EBIs effectively (Ennett et al., 2003). Schools also lack the expertise and personnel needed to integrate school-based prevention with family-focused prevention efforts (Adelman & Taylor, 2003); family-focused prevention requires active engagement of parents and others, as well as program expertise that can be provided by CES st

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Project Status: Not Started

This award's data was last updated on Sep. 30, 2009. Help expand these official descriptions using the wiki below.