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Promotional Video Transcript Voice Over:
You may have questions about how to effectively implement an evidence-based program or how
to develop an innovative strategy for addressing for a social problem in your community. You
may be wondering whether there is any guidance on selecting an evidence-based program from
an extensive list of programs, or how and whether a program can be adapted for use in
your own community. On April 2011, the U.S. Department of Health
and Human Services’ Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation hosted
a historic forum titled, Emphasizing Evidence-Based Programs for Children and Youth in Washington,
D.C. to begin to tackle these challenging questions.
More than 80 of the nation’s leading researchers and practitioners met with HHS staff to discuss
the state of evidence-based program implementation and to identify promising approaches for developing
evidence-informed strategies when evidence-based programs are not available. Over the course
of the forum, participants discussed challenges encountered when selecting and replicating
evidence-based programs and identified resources and strategies that are helpful in addressing
those challenges. This video highlights some of the key points
made during this forum. David Harris: There’s a lot of hard work
to figure out what are the key programs what can be replicated but that's only at most
half the work. The really hard work is saying OK now we've got these things how do we actually
implement them so the results are similar or match their expectations, hopefully even
exceed expectations. That’s what I think we're about here.
Karen Blase: Communities and states have to go through a process of examining their needs,
evaluating evidence-based practices, interviewing the resources that will get them there, interviewing
implementing sites and then, back to this theme we have of it’s a messy world, it’s
a tradeoff not everything's gonna be at a hundred percent.
Sharon Mihalic: It's important to understand fidelity because of the association between
the program and the outcomes. When I began looking at programs, when there was a program
failure I always thought it was a failure of the theory behind the program. My very
first question now is always was the program implemented with enough fidelity to achieve
results? And you know, when you do fidelity analyses and you do it in conjunction with
an outcome evaluation, you can learn many other things. You can learn about the thresholds
that are needed in implementing a program. Another excerpt from Sharon Mihalic: In a
study of 143 drug programs, well implemented programs achieved effect sizes .34 greater
than poorly implemented programs. In another one, implementation quality made the largest
contribution of any variable to effect size. Felipe Castro: What factors need to be considered
in identifying appropriate adaptations? Mentioned before, here are reports from the field staff.
Those are the ones in the trenches and if they come to you, and they have come to me,
saying this is not working as we planned, then there are several issues that need to
be addressed. It may be that they're not doing it right but it also may be that the program
is not functioning as planned. One key point here, beware of misadaptation and that's happened
to me, too. Voice over: For more information on the Emphasizing
Evidence-Based Programs for Children and Youth Forum sponsored by ASPE, and to view each
panelist’s presentation, please visit www.childtrends.org or www.findyouthinfo.gov.