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Issue No. 27


Welcome to the Blueprints Bulletin



December 2023

As 2023 ends, Blueprints is reflecting upon our mission and purpose. This month’s newsletter highlights Blueprints’ focus, which is on prevention of health-risk behaviors and promotion of positive functioning for youth.

What is Upstream Prevention?

Over thirty years of prevention research has demonstrated that it is possible to reduce negative health outcomes including violence, suicide, and substance misuse before they ever start. This was nicely summarized recently by the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. Determining and addressing the root causes and conditions that contribute to negative health outcomes is known as Upstream Prevention. Preventing negative outcomes before they ever occur and promoting positive behaviors requires looking upstream to examine what underlying conditions are important to address so the problem never arises to begin with.

Common terms for these underlying conditions include social determinants of health or shared risk and protective factors. These upstream factors are facets of the environment in which people live, learn, work, and play.

What is Prevention Science?

Prevention science focuses on the development, implementation, and evaluation of evidence-based strategies, programs, and policies that mitigate risk factors and strengthen protective factors to improve the health and wellbeing of individuals, families, and communities. Prevention Science is a relatively new discipline (the Society for Prevention Research, for example, was founded in 1991). The field, however, has grown rapidly.

For more information, read the full prevention science statement published by the National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives.

What are Evidence-Based Prevention Programs?

Over the past 30+ years, prevention research has shown that systematically addressing the root causes of behavioral problems and promoting protective and supportive environments will steadily (and cost-effectively!) help people address ongoing challenges throughout life.

Research on periods of vulnerability during youth development and the kinds of social and environmental factors that increase risks associated with problem behaviors have led to the design and testing of numerous interventions that have been shown to reduce risk factors as well as increase protective factors. These evidence-based prevention interventions have multiple benefits including decreased or delayed problem behaviors and better mental health and social functioning in adolescence and young adulthood.

Prevention programs listed on the Blueprints website are implemented at individual, family, school, and community levels and are designed to improve child development, support families, and enhance school experiences. Blueprints focuses on outcomes that benefit youth across a wide range of domains, including child welfare, public health, mental health, educational attainment, and delinquency (click here for more information on Blueprints outcomes).

Prevention Resources

Several online resources explain prevention and/or offer guidance on how to understand the prevention framework:

  • This 3.5-minute animated video, produced by the Prevention Research Center at Colorado State University, answers the question: “What is Prevention Science?”
  • This short video defines “upstream prevention” and uses visual analogies to quickly illustrate concepts such as social determinants of health, risk and protective factors, and the spectrum of prevention.
  • The Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency (PCCD), in collaboration with Penn State’s Evidence-based Prevention and Intervention Support (EPIS) project, has announced the launch of the Prevention Learning Portal, which is designed to help users apply evidence-based prevention approaches in their work and practice. As the website explains, “The portal serves as a one-stop-shop offering prevention resources, training, and self-paced learning programs.” All trainings and resources are offered in a free, online format.
  • ADAPT (A Division for Advancing Prevention & Treatment) published this brief, which identifies Blueprints as a source for locating evidence-based prevention programs. In addition, it (1) summarizes key lessons learned from prevention science that highlight what works to prevent substance use and promote positive development in youth, and (2) presents a five-phase approach to support the development and implementation of a comprehensive community-based prevention strategy. Further, this previous newsletter distributed by Blueprints highlights examples of effective frameworks for broad dissemination of Blueprints-certified prevention programs.

Blueprints’ focus

Launched in 1996, Blueprints is one of the longest-standing clearinghouses in the United States and around the world and the only registry solely focused on evidence-based prevention programs.

In preparing for 2024 and future work, we frequently reflect on our focus and role.

Blueprints’ mission is to identify, evaluate, and disseminate evidence about programs that prevent problem behaviors and promote healthy youth development.

We achieve our mission by:

  • Including a broad array of programs that address multiple behavioral outcomes for youth, including promoting social-emotional development, increasing educational attainment, reducing poor mental health (internalizing/externalizing) symptoms, and preventing juvenile delinquency and substance use/misuse. [Search programs].
  • Establishing rigorous standards for evidence and the certification of evidence-based prevention programs. These standards are focused on determining if a program works and is available for use. We update our standards as methods evolve. [Read more about Blueprints standards].
  • Certifying programs through a transparent process involving a thorough review of the evidence, consensus among a multi-disciplinary board of experts, and updating our registry as studies are published. [Read more about the Blueprints review process].
  • Providing information on certified programs through a free online and searchable registry, publications, posting on Facebook, Twitter/X, Instagram, and LinkedIn, newsletters, and engagement with communities, funders, policymakers, and government agencies.
  • Educating leaders and decision-makers in communities, schools and government about the importance of using evidence when selecting programs. We do this through publications, social media posts, interviews, presentations, and community partnerships. [Check Blueprints news & events].

In conducting our work, we value:

  • Partnership, which involves collaborating with communities, nonprofit organizations, practitioners, policymakers, schools, and other social institutions in the United States and around the world.
  • Transparency, which requires integrity and using open and ethical practices in our evidence reviews and outreach efforts.
  • Science and the use of rigorous, contextual, and experimental evidence.
  • Fostering diversity, equity, inclusion, and social justice, which entails concerted efforts to undo the negative impact of systems of oppression experienced by underserved communities that have been denied equitable opportunities for creating the safety and stability needed to avoid adverse experiences in the first place.

Going forward (2024 and beyond)

Blueprints’ overarching goal is to generate clear research evidence so that it is useful across the decision-making process and can be actively utilized to support and align social policy actions and investments. In support of this goal, among our priorities for 2024 are to:

  • Identify the structural drivers of behavioral health disparities and maintain an inventory of evidence-based preventive programs for youth shown to advance behavioral health equity.
  • Provide easy access to meaningful evaluation findings and identify evidence gaps for historically underserved populations.
  • Communicate evaluation findings in context, which involves soliciting community voice and expanding upon the cultural relevance of programs listed on the Blueprints registry.

We welcome your ideas as we explore these enhancements to the Blueprints registry and thank you for your continued interest in and support of Blueprints.

Happy Holidays!

Sincerely,


Pamela Buckley, PhD
PI, Blueprints Initiative
Pamela.Buckley@Colorado.edu


Karl G. Hill, PhD
Board Chair and Co-PI
Karl.Hill@Colorado.edu

Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development is developed and managed by the University of Colorado Boulder, Institute of Behavioral Science, with current support from Arnold Ventures and former funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Each intervention included in the database has been reviewed carefully by an independent advisory panel that looked at research on the intervention’s impact, practical focus and potential for implementation in public systems.

2023 in Review
By the numbers

Below is a summary of our year in review.

Interventions Reviewed & Certified in the Past Year:

  • Number of Unique Interventions Reviewed = 52
  • Number of Individual Articles or Reports Reviewed = 109
  • Number of Interventions Certified = 10

Wyman’s Teen Connection Project (Promising)
Added: Jan. 31, 2023
Learn more

CUNY Start (Promising)
Added: Feb. 6, 2023
Learn more

Valley Initiative for Development and Advancement (VIDA) (Promising)
Added: Mar. 3, 2023
Learn more

Literacy First (Promising)
Added: Apr. 19, 2023
Learn more

ABC Project (Promising)
Added: June 27, 2023
Learn more

Project Personality (Promising)
Added: June 27, 2023
Learn more

SNAP® (Stop Now and Plan) Boys (Promising)
Added: June 27, 2023
Learn more

Cooperative Learning (Promising)
Added: July 31, 2023
Learn more

Coping Power Universal for Preschoolers (Promising)
Added: July 31, 2023
Learn more

Children of Divorce – Coping with Divorce (CoD-CoD) (Promising)
Added: Nov. 3, 2023
Learn more

 
 

Featured Model Program
Project Towards No Drug Abuse (TND)

Blueprints Certified: 1997

Ages Served: Late Adolescence (15-18) – High School

Program Outcomes: Alcohol, Illicit Drugs, Marijuana/Cannabis, Tobacco

Goal and Target Population: A high school classroom-based drug prevention program that aims to prevent teen drinking, smoking, marijuana, and other hard drug use.

Learn more about Project Towards No Drug Abuse

Featured Promising Program
Wyman’s Teen Connection Project

Blueprints Certified: 2023

Ages Served: Late Adolescence (15-18) – High School

Program Outcomes: Close Relationships with Peers, Depression

Goal and Target Population: A school- and community-based program to enhance adolescent peer relationships and improve social-emotional and well-being outcomes.

Learn more about Wyman’s Teen Connection Project

Blueprints News & Resources
Relevant articles and helpful resources

  • The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine published a report titled Fostering Healthy Mental, Emotional, and Behavioral Development in Children and Youth which explains how mental, emotional, and behavioral (MEB) development during childhood is critical for a productive adulthood. Blueprints’ work draws upon this report, which explains the growing body of research that has significantly strengthened understanding of healthy MEB development and the factors that influence it, as well as how healthy MEB can be fostered.
  • Dr. Pamela Buckley served as an invited panelist at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee on Law and Justice public seminar focused on evidence translation efforts with support from the National Institute of Justice. She described Blueprints’ review process and communication of outcome evidence as part of a panel organized to gather researcher feedback on CrimeSolutions, a web-based clearinghouse operated by the U.S. Department of Justice to examine programs and practices aimed at improving criminal justice, juvenile justice, and crime victim services outcomes. Check out the panel conversation, including Dr. Buckley’s talk.
  • This opioid policy briefing from the National Prevention Science Coalition recommends the Blueprints registry as part of a Strategy for Preventing Opioid Use Disorders in Communities. The brief reviews current challenges regarding opioid use disorder and provides recommendations and strategies for prevention.
  • Assets Coming Together (ACT) for Youth just released a Youth Development Program Toolkit containing a variety of resources to help youth development professionals and organizations think through and plan for effective programming. The Toolkit lists Blueprints as a resource for identifying evidence-based programs.

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© 2023 Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, Regents of the University of Colorado. All rights reserved. 

Our mailing address is:
University of Colorado Boulder | Institute of Behavioral Science
483 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309


Issue No. 26


Welcome to the Blueprints Bulletin




September 2023

This newsletter focuses on racial equity. As you will see in the conclusion, we welcome your input on how Blueprints can strategically advance racial equity to improve the lives of all children, youth, and families. Please email your ideas to us at: blueprints@colorado.edu

Now, taking a step back, we ask:

Why is it important for evidence-based programs (EBPs) to be representative of diverse populations?

Before we discuss some of our own thinking, we thought it would be interesting to pose the question to ChatGPT. Below are its autogenerated responses with some edits for clarity.

  • Equity and Fairness: Ensuring that evidence-based programs are applicable to diverse populations promotes equity in access to services and resources. When programs are designed and tested on a narrow, non-representative group, it can perpetuate disparities and exclude marginalized or underrepresented communities from benefiting from those programs.
  • Cultural Relevancy: Diverse populations often have unique cultural norms, values, and needs. An evidence-based program that takes these factors into account is more likely to be culturally relevant, which enhances acceptability by reaching and engaging communities and their youth in a manner that is consistent with the cultural context and values of that community.
  • Generalizability: The findings and recommendations from evidence-based programs should be applicable to a broader population beyond the initial research group. However, if the program is only tested on a homogenous group, whether it will generalize to other communities is not known until it has been rigorously evaluated.
  • Community Engagement and Trust: Engaging diverse populations in program development and evaluation builds trust within communities. When communities see themselves represented in the process, they are more likely to trust the program and be willing to participate, which supports the program’s success.
  • Funding Support: Policymakers and funders often prioritize EBPs across diverse populations. Having research that includes a wide range of demographics and contexts can help secure resources for scaling and sustaining EBPs.

While the points raised by our ChatGPT robot friends are supported by the current state of the field, there are additional important considerations – for example, cultural adaptation and the development of and testing of culturally tailored EBPs. Following is a summary of each.

Cultural Adaptation

Cultural adaptation involves changing content and materials of an EBP to align with the cultural preferences and sensitivities of the target group.

In thinking about what kinds of changes are needed as Blueprints certified interventions are implemented among diverse populations, communities are encouraged to

  1. Check with the intervention developer on this question for the population(s) they are serving
  2. If changes are deemed necessary, consider the “stoplight” framework profiled in a previous newsletter (click here to read more) and depicted in Figure 1 (below).

Figure 1: Using the “Traffic Light” Analogy to Balance Fidelity and Adaptation


Source: Implementation Science at a Glance (p. 12)

Blueprints programs with “green light” adaptations have a good possibility of working (particularly Model and Model Plus programs). However, the more extensive the changes made, and/or the more divergent the target population is from the population in which the program was tested, the greater the need to evaluate the program to make sure it is still effective.

We discussed these points in our last newsletter (click here to read more).

Culturally Tailored Evidence-Based Programs

This approach to designing and implementing evidence-based programs considers the cultural context, values, beliefs, and needs of the target population. These programs have also been demonstrated through rigorous evaluation to be effective. Culturally tailored EBPs combine the best available evidence with cultural relevance.

Two examples of culturally tailored EBPs are profiled in this month’s e-newsletter (both are rated as Promising). They include:

  • Familias Unidas, which is a family-based intervention to empower Latino or Hispanic parents residing in the United States in an emerging immigration context to build a strong parent-support network and help their adolescent children respond effectively to the risks of substance use and unsafe sexual behavior. Influenced by culturally specific models, the program first builds a strong parent-support network and then uses the network to increase knowledge of culturally relevant parenting, strengthen parenting skills, and apply new skills in a series of activities designed to help their adolescent children deal successfully with the challenges of daily life. These activities are led by a Spanish-speaking bicultural facilitator.
  • Strong African American Families (SAAF) Program, which is an interactive educational program for African American parents and their early adolescent children living in rural communities. The goal of SAAF is to foster resilience among African American youth and prepare them to avoid the negative consequences associated with poverty, exposure to negative community influences and discrimination. The program promotes positive parent-child relationships; enhanced parenting which includes high levels of monitoring and strong communication; and future orientation, resistance skills and acceptance of parental influence by adolescents. All sessions are led by African American community members trained in the SAAF curriculum.

Next, we detail how Blueprints supports prevention efforts within diverse populations.

Understanding for Whom and in What Settings EBPs “Work”

Blueprints’ “Intervention Specificity” standard focuses on the theoretical basis and logic model for the program (you can read more here). To meet this standard, programs must describe:

  • The intended participants to receive the intervention.
  • The relevant sociodemographic characteristics (age, gender/gender identity, racial and ethnic group, socio‐economic status, urban/suburban/rural residence) of those targeted by the intervention.
  • Screening criteria and the screening process if the intended participants are those who have been screened based upon some characteristic(s) (e.g., a risk condition, protective factor status, a minimum level of the study outcome, or some personal or family attribute).
  • All inclusion or exclusion criteria for program participation.

Often, we are posed with the question of whether a given Blueprints-certified program will work in certain communities, since preventive interventions serve diverse populations in terms of race, ethnicity, culture, and other sociodemographic factors. For this reason, we include the following information in the “Evaluation Abstract” of all 111 Promising and Model/Model Plus programs currently listed on the Blueprints registry (as of September 2023):

  • The target population served by the program in terms of:
    1. age;
    2. race/ethnicity;
    3. gender/gender identity; and
    4. prevention category, including
      1. Universal strategies that address the entire population;
      2. Selective strategies that target subgroups deemed at-risk; or
      3. Indicated strategies that target youth showing early signs of problem behaviors.
  • Sample demographics of studies that meet Blueprints evaluation quality standards to provide information on the program’s generalizability.
  • A description of whether the program is implemented at the individual, family, or community level.
  • A summary of findings overall (i.e., for the entire sample) and across subgroups to help users understand groups that benefit from interventions, and differential effects that can lead to reducing disparities between subgroups.

Racial and Ethnic Representation in Preventive Intervention Research

The historic momentum concerning acknowledgement of social ills resulting from challenges made worse by the COVID-19 pandemic, however, led Blueprints to question the extent to which preventive interventions collectively (i.e., as a field) are designed to adequately address issues of inequity.

For this reason, we conducted a study among 885 programs with evaluations published from 2010-2021 and recorded in the Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development registry (Buckley et al., 2023). The sample therefore included both certified programs (listed here) and non-certified programs (listed here).

The study emphasized race because COVID-19 brought racial and ethnic inequities to the forefront of public health, exacerbating existing discrepancies for individuals who belong to underserved communities that have been denied equitable opportunities for creating the safety and stability needed to avoid adverse experiences in the first place. Although race is a social construct, it is one of the most powerful and persistent group boundaries in American life today (Okamoto, 2021).

In coding studies, we selected enrollment data for five racial categories to align with U.S. Census coding operations (Asian; Black; Native American; Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander; and White) and treated ethnicity (coded as Hispanic or Latino) as separate from race (Humes et al., 2011). We found that:

  • Two percent of programs were developed for Black or African American youth and four percent targeted Hispanic or Latino populations.
  • In the 77% of studies that reported race, 35% of enrollees were White, 28% were Black or African American, and 31% combined different racial groups into one category (e.g., “other”) and/or categorized race (e.g., African American) with ethnicity (e.g., Hispanic).
  • In the 64% of studies that reported ethnicity, 32% of enrollees were Hispanic or Latino.
  • American Indian or Alaskan Native, Asian American, and Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander populations were largely missing from the samples or combined in a residual “other” category.

These results led us to conclude that research gaps on racial ethnic groups call for clearer reporting and better representation to understand for whom and in what settings preventive interventions work. The full study can be accessed here and here.

Conclusion

At the forefront of evidence-based programming since the 1990s, the Blueprints registry has come to define excellence in its standards for recommending evidence-based programs.

While Blueprints has done much over the decades to identify and disseminate information on programs shown to benefit racial and ethnic minoritized groups, we recognize the need to do more.

We envision improving the lives of all youth by advancing equitable opportunities for safety and stability. In doing so, we seek to meaningfully engage with thought partners who share our commitment to the values of diversity, equity, inclusion and social justice. We therefore welcome your input on how Blueprints can strategically advance racial equity to improve the lives of all children, youth, and families. Please email your ideas to us at: blueprints@colorado.edu.

And as always, thank you for your continued interest in and support of Blueprints.

Sincerely,


Pamela Buckley, PhD
PI, Blueprints Initiative
Pamela.Buckley@Colorado.edu


Karl G. Hill, PhD
Board Chair
Karl.Hill@Colorado.edu

References

Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development is developed and managed by the University of Colorado Boulder, Institute of Behavioral Science, with current support from Arnold Ventures and former funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Each intervention included in the database has been reviewed carefully by an independent advisory panel that looked at research on the intervention’s impact, practical focus and potential for implementation in public systems.

 
 

Featured Culturally Tailored Program
Familias Unidas™

Blueprints Certified: 2012

Ages Served: Early Adolescence (12-14) – Middle School, Late Adolescence (15-18) – High School

Program Outcomes: Alcohol, Externalizing, Illicit Drugs, Sexual Risk Behaviors

Goal and Target Population: A family-based intervention to empower Latino or Hispanic parents residing in the United States in an emerging immigration context to build a strong parent-support network and help their adolescent children respond effectively to the risks of substance use and unsafe sexual behavior.

Learn more about Familias Unidas™

Featured Culturally Tailored Program
Strong African American Families Program

Blueprints Certified: 2006

Ages Served: Late Childhood (5-11) – K/Elementary, Early Adolescence (12-14) – Middle School

Program Outcomes: Alcohol, Conduct Problems, Marijuana/Cannabis, Sexual Risk Behaviors

Goal and Target Population: An interactive educational program for African American parents and their early adolescent children living in rural communities that is designed to strengthen family relationships and help adolescents develop positive behaviors and respond effectively to the risks of substance use, delinquency, and sexual involvement.

Learn more about Strong African American Families Program

Blueprints Interventions in the News
Relevant Articles and Helpful Resources

Blueprints is listed as a reference within the Evidence-Based Practices Resource Center (EBPRC) sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) housed within the US Department of Health & Human Services. SAMHSA’s EBPRC is charged with identifying, evaluating, and disseminating information on evidence-based programs (EBPs). SAMHSA has recently issued a request for information (RFI) asking for input on the following opportunities:

  1. Addition of a component to the EBPRC that reviews and rates specific behavioral health EBPs, as done through EBP registries.
  2. Incorporation of resources borrowed from the fields of implementation science, process improvement, capacity building, and program evaluation into the EBPRC.
  3. Inclusion of culturally informed and community-driven programs and practices into the EBPRC.

We hope you will provide comments, and in doing so, consider ways Blueprints could continue to support the work of SAMHSA’s EBPRC.

Please note that comments on the notice must be received by October 13, 2023.

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© 2023 Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, Regents of the University of Colorado. All rights reserved. 

Our mailing address is:
University of Colorado Boulder | Institute of Behavioral Science
483 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309


Issue No. 25


Welcome to the Blueprints Bulletin



July 2023

Building the Evidence Base of Interventions

The focus of this quarter’s newsletter is improving our understanding of how we approach and build the evidence-base of interventions. We aim to clarify concepts of evidence with the goal of supporting a comprehensive vision for the use of research evidence in developing, evaluating, implementing, and sustaining evidence-based interventions (EBIs) to ultimately improve public health and well-being at scale.

Conceptualizing Evidence

Evidence comes in multiple forms.

Brownson and colleagues (2022) describe evidence across three broad domains:

  • Type 1: Evidence on etiology (i.e., the study of the causes of diseases/behavioral problems) and burden (the impact of disease/behavioral problem on a population);
  • Type 2: Evidence on effectiveness of interventions; and
  • Type 3: Evidence on dissemination and implementation (D&I).

The authors explain that the three types of evidence are often not linear, but interconnected, iterative, and overlapping—they shape one another (e.g., if we have limited type 2 evidence then the ability to apply type 3 evidence is hampered).

Meanwhile, several versions of an evidence continuum have been developed to clarify and define standards of the “best available research evidence.” Most examples focus on what Brownson and colleagues (2022) would qualify as “type 1” and “type 2” evidence.

For example, Colorado is one of many states that has created a framework called Colorado’s Evidence Continuum, which is used to strengthen the state’s budget investment choices, encourage innovation, and expand the use of evaluation to understand whether programs “work.” Colorado’s continuum includes five ascending steps, each of which represent the stages of building and assessing program information.

  • Step 1: Program design, which requires a logic model showing how program activities should cause the desired changes.
  • Step 2: Identify outputs, which refers to observable measures of service delivery provided (e.g., number of individuals served).
  • Step 3: Assess outcomes, such as conducting a pre- and posttest involving individuals who participate in the program.
  • Step 4: Attain initial evidence, which involves examining outcomes for individuals who receive the program (i.e., treatment group) compared to those who do not receive the program.
  • Step 5: Attain causal evidence, which often includes conducting one or more randomized controlled trials (RCTs) – or experiments in which researchers randomly assign participants to a treatment group or a control group.

According to Colorado’s framework, as programs move up the five steps of the evidence continuum by using more advanced research designs, studies with higher levels of precision offer decision-makers greater confidence that investments could lead to intended outcomes. These research levels include:

  • “Theory-informed” at the lowest level, denoting advice from program providers, experts, and user satisfaction surveys.
  • “Evidence-informed” in the middle, indicating preliminary evaluation with a before and after (pre-test and posttest) design.
  • “Proven” at the highest level, requiring one RCT or two or more comparison studies with strict statistical controls.

Interventions with a Promising, Model or Model Plus rating on the Blueprints registry are in the “proven” stage of Colorado’s evidence continuum.

Another framework for considering the evidence base of an EBI evolved from a work group formed in 2013 by the National Institutes of Health to address dissemination and implementation research. Reported on in Brown et al. (2017), this translational evidence pipeline is summarized as follows:

  • Evidence begins with basic research to inform the development of a new program. (Type 1 Evidence)
  • This program is evaluated in the efficacy stage in which a highly trained research team typically delivers the program with careful monitoring and supervision to ensure high fidelity. Efficacy trials can answer only questions of whether a program could work under rigorous conditions. (Type 2 Evidence)
  • Next is the effectiveness stage, where developers are less involved. What we know could work under ideal conditions is answered in efficacy trials versus what we know about program delivery in practice and in community settings is the focus of effectiveness trials. (Type 2 Evidence)
  • Dissemination and implementation (D&I) research represents a distinct stage that occurs after efficacy and effectiveness trials. This stage of evidence building aims to improve the adoption, appropriate adaptation, delivery, and sustainment of EBIs by providers, clinics, organizations, communities, and systems of care. (Type 3 Evidence)

Moullin and colleagues (2019) describe an EPIS framework for D&I research that occurs in four phases:

  • Exploration, which refers to whether a service delivery system (e.g., health care, social service, school) or community organization would find a particular EBI useful, given its outer context (e.g., service system, federal policy, funding) and inner context (e.g., organizational climate, provider experience).
  • Preparation, which refers to putting into place the collaborations, policies, funding, supports, and processes needed across the multilevel outer and inner contexts to introduce a new EBI into a setting once stakeholders decide to adopt it. In this phase, adaptations to the service system, service delivery organizations, and the clinical/preventive intervention itself are considered and prepared.
  • Implementation, which refers to the support processes that are developed to recruit, train, monitor, and supervise facilitators to deliver the EBI with fidelity and, if necessary, to adapt systematically to the local context.
  • Sustainment, which refers to how EBI providers maintain the program, especially after the initial funding period has ended.

The traditional translational pipeline reported on in Brown et al. (2017) is commonly used by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other research-focused organizations to move scientific knowledge from basic and other preintervention research to efficacy and effectiveness trials and to a stage that reaches the public.

Synthesizing Evidence Frameworks

We created Figure 1 (below) to summarize these different forms of evidence into one diagram.

Figure 1 – Summary of Evidence Frameworks

Adaptation

A challenge we face is advising the field on whether Blueprints-certified interventions will work with adaptation (versus whether they need to be implemented exactly as designed in diverse communities).

Our Spring 2023 newsletter provided guidance on research-informed adaptation strategies.

The question, however, of whether an EBI applies for a specific population and/or community involves a set of scientific considerations that include balancing of fidelity to the original EBI with adaptations needed for replication and scale-up (see #7 in Figure 1), as well as considerations as to when there may be a need to “start from scratch” (i.e., shifting from #7 to #1 of Figure 1) in developing, evaluating and scaling a new intervention as opposed to refining or adapting an existing EBI (i.e., #8 of Figure 1).

We touched on this issue in a talk, Addressing Health Equity and Social Justice within Prevention Registries, which is recorded and uploaded on the Blueprints website.

In consultation with the Blueprints advisory board, Blueprints staff seek guidance from the Program Developers/Owners and evaluators of an EBI to conduct a qualitative analysis of the program’s core components (i.e., activities directly related to a program’s theory of change, which proposes the mechanisms by which a program works) to determine if a well-evaluated program (i.e., meets Blueprints standards) is the same or an adapted version of the original well-evaluated program.

Below are examples of Blueprints-certified programs that have undergone this review, resulting in the decision for Blueprints to certify an adapted version of the original program.

Conclusion

This newsletter covers a lot of terminology used to describe how the evidence base of EBIs is generated. In addition, we aimed to connect the traditional evidence pipeline of developing and evaluating a program with the newer evaluation field of dissemination and implementation research. While these terms and frameworks can be confusing, what is most important is that decisions should be based on and informed by evaluation and research findings generated using rigorous methods.

And as always, thank you for your continued interest in and support of Blueprints.

Sincerely,


Pamela Buckley, PhD
PI, Blueprints Initiative
Pamela.Buckley@Colorado.edu


Karl G. Hill, PhD
Board Chair and Co-PI
Karl.Hill@Colorado.edu

References

  • Brown, C. H., Curran, G., Palinkas, L. A., Aarons, G. A., Wells, K. B., Jones, L., … Cruden, G. (2017). An overview of research and evaluation designs for dissemination and implementation. Annual Review of Public Health, 38, 1-22. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-publhealth-031816-044215
  • Brownson, R.C., Shelton, R.C., Geng, E.H., & Glasgow, R. E. (2022). Revisiting concepts of evidence in implementation science. Implementation Science, 17, 26. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-022-01201-y
  • Moullin, J. C., Dickson, K. S., Stadnick, N. A., Rabin, B., & Aarons, G. A. (2019). Systematic review of the Exploration, Preparation, Implementation, Sustainment (EPIS) framework. Implementation Science, 14, 1. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-018-0842-6

Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development is developed and managed by the University of Colorado Boulder, Institute of Behavioral Science, with current support from Arnold Ventures and former funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Each intervention included in the Blueprints database has been reviewed carefully by an independent advisory panel that looked at research on the intervention’s impact, practical focus and potential for implementation in public systems.

 
 

Featured Model Program
Multisystemic Therapy® (MST®)

Blueprints Certified: 1997

Ages Served: Early Adolescence (12-14) – Middle School, Late Adolescence (15-18) – High School

Program Outcomes: Close Relationship with Parents, Conduct Problems, Delinquency and Criminal Behavior, Externalizing, Internalizing, Mental Health – Other, Positive/Prosocial Behavior, Prosocial with Peers, Violence

Goal and Target Population: A juvenile crime prevention program designed to improve the real-world functioning of youth by changing their natural settings – home, school, and neighborhood – in ways that promote prosocial behavior while decreasing antisocial behavior.

Learn more about Multisystemic Therapy® (MST®)

Featured Promising Program
SNAP® (Stop Now And Plan) Boys

Blueprints Certified: 2023

Ages Served: Late Childhood (5-11) – K/Elementary

Program Outcomes: Antisocial-aggressive Behavior, Anxiety, Conduct Problems, Delinquency and Criminal Behavior, Depression, Emotional Regulation, Externalizing, Internalizing

Goal and Target Population: A cognitive behavioral multi-component training program designed to reduce antisocial behavior and/or police contact among boys at risk for such engagement by decreasing the factors that make children susceptible for continued delinquency and strengthening the protective factors of the parents, the child, and the family structure.

Learn more about SNAP® Boys

Blueprints Interventions in the News
Relevant Articles and Helpful Resources

In case you have missed them, here are a few news articles and web postings that discuss Blueprints and/or feature some of our Blueprints Model/Model Plus and Promising Programs:

  • We are excited to announce the launch of the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Evidence2Success Tool Kit, which is aimed at aid­ing com­mu­ni­ties of every size — from small rur­al school dis­tricts to large met­ro­pol­i­tan areas — gath­er data and align fund­ing to improve out­comes for young peo­ple and families. The tool kit uti­lizes com­mu­ni­ty-test­ed tools, strate­gies and tech­ni­cal assis­tance to help edu­ca­tors, pol­i­cy­mak­ers and orga­ni­za­tions bet­ter under­stand and address social and emo­tion­al issues — such as sub­stance use and abuse, bul­ly­ing and more — that impact chil­dren and their families. Blueprints is listed as a resource available via the tool kit. Find out more in the Tool Kit announcement.
  • Congratulations to our PI Dr. Pamela Buckley on receiving the 2023 Society for Prevention (SPR) Research Nan Tobler Award, which is given to an individual or a team of individuals for contributions to the summarization or articulation of the empirical evidence relevant to prevention. SPR noted how Dr. Buckley’s leadership in the use of research generated from the Blueprints registry has contributed to the importance of ensuring that evidence-based interventions are not only based on sound science but are also representative of diverse populationsreadily accessible, and transparently presented.
  • Justin Milner is the new Executive Vice President of Evidence and Evaluation at Arnold Ventures (AV), Blueprints’ current funder. In this Q&A with him that was posted to AV’s website, Mr. Miller mentions Blueprints by name as a good resource for finding what programs have been effective in rigorous evaluations.
  • Larimer County’s three school districts will use some of Colorado’s opioid settlement funds to ramp up school-based drug use prevention via a grant earned by Colorado State University’s Prevention Research Center. The effort will involve implementing the Blues Program, which is a Blueprints Model program shown to decrease student substance use and mental health challenges including depression. The Blues Program developers will train personnel from all three districts this fall 2023. Find out more about the Larimer County drug prevention efforts.
  • The Wyman Center recently received a $1.4 million grant to continue their work supporting teen mental health and preventing teen pregnancy with the Blueprints-certified Promising Wyman’s Teen Connection Project and Wyman’s Teen Outreach Program.
  • The Blueprints-certified Model+ Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) was recently featured on PBS NewsHour.

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Our mailing address is:
University of Colorado Boulder | Institute of Behavioral Science
483 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309


Issue No. 24


Welcome to the Blueprints Bulletin




April 2023

Adaptation 

We at Blueprints are frequently asked to provide guidance on maintaining fidelity in adaptations of evidence-based interventions. The Blueprints registry currently lists 106 preventive interventions that have been evaluated using rigorous scientific standards and demonstrated to improve youth behavioral outcomes.  
 
Implementing Blueprints-certified interventions with fidelity (or as intended) is important to yield these positive outcomes, as poor implementation fidelity can compromise program mechanisms and undermine their effectiveness.
 
Adhering to fidelity guidelines, however, is challenging when interventions are adapted to the realities of the environment. Some adjustments or adaptations are necessary when interventions are implemented in natural settings.
 
Fidelity and adaptation are often at odds; simultaneously adhering to fidelity guidelines while adapting to realities of the implementation context is a delicate balance. So how do we specify that balance between flexibility and fidelity? This is a topic of much debate.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Adaptation
 
Thoughtful and deliberate adaptation to the delivery of a Blueprints-certified intervention to improve its fit in each context can lead to better engagement, acceptability, and outcomes.
 
However, modifications that remove key elements – or core components – of an intervention may be less effective. An evidence-based program’s core components are the essential activities deemed necessary to produce desired outcomes. The core components are the features that define an effective program.
 
Similarly, reactive adaptations can lead to program drift, resulting in lower impact on outcomes and rendering an evidence-based intervention ineffective.
 
Adaptations, especially untested, threaten to weaken evidence-based interventions, undermine results, and thereby erode confidence in scientific claims that Blueprints-certified interventions work.

Research-Informed Adaptation Strategies

What are “best practices” for making adaptations to a Blueprints-certified program?
 
Using a traffic light as an analogy, Balis and colleagues (2021) assign a color for making changes to an evidence-based intervention:

  • Tailoring language or pictures (green light/low risk).
  • Adding/substituting activities or session sequence (yellow light/medium risk).
  • Deleting lessons and decreasing session length (red light/high risk).

The National Institutes of Health developed a series of Practice Tools to understand, plan for, and implement evidence-based interventions into routine health care and public health settings.
 
Included in this series is a workbook, titled Implementation Science at a Glance. The picture below can be found on page 12 of this guide – it offers some concrete guidance on how to use the “traffic light” analogy to balance fidelity and adaptation.

Video Trainings on Best Practices for Adaptation of Evidence-Based Programs
 
Below are a series of pre-recorded workshops developed by the Prevention Research Center (PRC) at Colorado State University (CSU). Click on each title to view the workshop.
 
Learning Workshop I: Orientation to the PRC’s Implementation Toolbox
 
Join CSU’s PRC Research-to-Practice team to learn about their new Implementation Toolbox website. During this interactive tutorial, we will walk you through the website, introduce you to new tools and resources for program implementation and adaptation, and describe different navigation methods.
 
Learning Workshop II: Roadblocks, Potholes, & Solutions for High-Impact EBP Implementation
 
Join CSU’s PRC Research to Practice team as we delve into the topic of maintaining fidelity to evidence-based program (EBP) implementation. This workshop will describe what implementation fidelity is, best practice methods for maintaining fidelity to EBPs, and discuss common implementation barriers and potential solutions for overcoming them. Additionally, available resources through the PRC’s Implementation Toolbox will be described.
 
Learning Workshop III – Adaptations Part I: Best Practices for Adapting EBPs
 
Join the PRC’s Research to Practice Team as we dive into best practices for modifying programs in part one of a two-part Learning Workshop series on program adaptations. In this video you will learn what adaptations are, common causes that lead to them, and best practices for deciding upon and implementing program changes. Specifically, the Traffic Light Model for Adaptations is discussed and considered through a series of activities provided throughout the presentation.
 
Learning Workshop IV – Adaptations Part II: Challenges in Adapting for Culture
 
Join the PRC’s Research to Practice Team as we dive into best practices for culturally adapting evidence-based programs in part two of a two-part Learning Workshop series. In this video, you will learn what cultural adaptations are, important definitions to keep in mind, and best practices to follow as you adapt your programs to meet your local community’s needs and strengths.

Conclusion

Please send us research-informed strategies you have used to balance fidelity with adaptation to a Blueprints-certified program. We can be reached at: blueprints@colorado.edu.
 
And as always, thank you for your continued interest in and support of Blueprints.
 
Sincerely,


Pamela Buckley, PhD
PI, Blueprints Initiative
Pamela.Buckley@Colorado.edu


Karl G. Hill, PhD
Board Chair and Co-PI
Karl.Hill@Colorado.edu

Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development is developed and managed by the University of Colorado Boulder, Institute of Behavioral Science, with current support from Arnold Ventures and former funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Each intervention included in the Blueprints database has been reviewed carefully by an independent advisory panel that looked at research on the intervention’s impact, practical focus and potential for implementation in public systems.

 
 

Featured Model Program
Blues Program

Blueprints Certified: 2015

Ages Served: Late Adolescence (15-18) – High School

Program Outcomes: Alcohol, Depression, Illicit Drugs, Marijuana/Cannabis

Goal and Target Population: A school-based group intervention that aims to reduce negative cognition and increase engagement in pleasant activities to prevent the onset and persistence of depression in high school students exhibiting depressive symptoms.

Learn more about Blues Program

Featured Promising Program
RealTeen

Blueprints Certified: 2022

Ages Served: Early Adolescence (12-14) – Middle School

Program Outcomes: Illicit Drugs, Marijuana/Cannabis, Tobacco

Goal and Target Population: An internet-based, gender-specific drug abuse prevention program intended to reduce substance use among early adolescent girls through improving personal, social, and drug refusal skills.

Learn more about RealTeen

Blueprints Interventions in the News
Relevant Articles and Helpful Resources

In case you have missed them, here are a few news articles and web postings that discuss Blueprints and/or feature some of our Blueprints Model/Model Plus and Promising Programs:

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© 2023 Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, Regents of the University of Colorado. All rights reserved. 

Our mailing address is:
University of Colorado Boulder | Institute of Behavioral Science
483 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309


Issue No. 23


Welcome to the Blueprints Bulletin



December 2022

Leadership Letter: 

For more than 25 years Blueprints has served as a resource for governmental agencies, foundations, community organizations and practitioners seeking to make informed decisions about their investments in preventive interventions. Since 1996, Blueprints has carefully reviewed the evidence for over 3,000 studies evaluating 1,500 interventions and thus serves as an excellent, internationally recognized resource on what programs have been shown to work in rigorous evaluations across a wide range of policy areas.
 
Often, we are asked: How does Blueprints measure its success?
 
We do this through a range of markers, examples of which are highlighted below.
 
Blueprints’ Electronic Footprint
 
For pure dissemination information, we track google analytics to determine user interactions with the website. On average, Blueprints receives around 17,500 unique pageviews and 9,000 sessions a month, which translates to nearly 600 unique pageviews and 300 sessions per day. We are also active on social media, including:

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If you don’t already, please sign up to follow us on any of these social media platforms!

Community Prevention Strategies
 
Another method for measuring success involves documenting the use of Blueprints in community prevention strategies now in wide use. For example, Communities That Care (CTC), is a prevention system designed to reduce levels of adolescent delinquency and substance use through the selection and use of effective preventive interventions tailored to a community’s specific profile of risk and protection. CTC trains community members in how to select and expand their use of tested and effective interventions specifically using the Blueprints website. CTC is currently successfully operational in over 130 communities in the United States, such as in Colorado where the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) adopted CTC in 2016 as a statewide prevention model, and CDPHE presently funds 30 CTC communities across the state. Internationally, CTC is operating in dozens of communities around the world (including Germany, Sweden, Denmark, The Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Croatia, Austria, Switzerland, Canada, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Panama and Australia) to promote healthy development and reduce risk behavior.
 
An additional example is Evidence2Success®, which  is an initiative of the Annie E. Casey Foundation that brings together public-system leaders and community members to understand how children are doing with the help of data; select evidence-based programs, including those from Blueprints to enhance strengths and address needs; and develop financing and action plans to support the ongoing use of those proven programs. The initiative began with a pilot site in Providence, RI in 2012 and has since expanded to Mobile, Alabama; Selma, Alabama; Kearns Township, Salt Lake County, Utah; Memphis, Tennessee; and Miami, Florida. As part of the Evidence2Success framework, public systems and schools commit up front to redirecting a portion of their combined resources for children. These partners work with a team of finance and administration professionals to identify funding sources within their agency budgets and coordinate funding to invest in programs that respond to the outcomes prioritized by the partnership. In recent years, the Foundation has carefully tracked the resources leveraged by sites in support of Blueprints programs and supporting infrastructure. Since 2017, sites have leveraged more than $6 million across child welfare, juvenile justice, school district, public health, social service, city, county, and substance abuse and mental health systems. The addition of related activities, such as clinical services and trauma trainings in Providence, raises the total amount leveraged to $15 million.

References in Evidence-Based Funding Guidelines
 
We track references to Blueprints in guides used to determine grant eligibility or that require evidence to support funding decisions. For example, the Pew Charitable Trusts cited Blueprints by name in a 2022 report titled How Nongovernmental Groups Can Support States in Evidence-Based Policymaking (see page 11). In addition, Blueprints is listed as a reference within the Evidence-Based Practices Resource Center sponsored by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) housed within the US Department of Health & Human Services, and Blueprints is referenced in several reports prepared for SAMHSA such as:

Historically, Blueprints has been listed as a resource for locating evidence-based interventions in several handbooks developed to support funding mandates across the United States. Recent examples include:

Informing Standards of Research on Evidence-Based Programs
 
We monitor documents referencing Blueprints standards of evidence, highlighting the design, methods, and analysis issues Blueprints considers when determining the credibility of causal claims of program effectiveness. For example, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and World Health Organization recently suggested that national standards globally enforce a requirement of implementing evidence-based strategies only by utilizing registries such as Blueprints, citing the registry by name (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime & World Health Organization, 2018, see page 42). Meanwhile, A Guide to Writing High-Quality Evaluation Reports in Child Welfare distributed by the Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation at the Administration for Children and Families (ACF) and the Urban Institute discussed key design elements for rigorous impact evaluations by analyzing the study rating criteria used at Blueprints (among other registries) to create an invaluable resource for anyone in the planning and design stages of impact evaluation in child welfare.

Media Op-Eds Highlighting Blueprints

We identify when Blueprints is mentioned in national and local media pieces, such as a New York Times op-ed on reducing school violence (Keels, 2018), several op-eds in local and national news media outlets advocating for a prevention strategy in dealing with the opioid surge (Riggs, 2022, Richter & Fishbein, 2022), and a discussion in The Hill of interventions such as those listed on the Blueprints registry that are effectively alleviating economic hardship (Baron, 2022).

Scientific Impact

And finally, we examine success in terms of scientific impact. Blueprints’ founder, Dr. Del Elliott, is a leading advocate for evidence-based prevention. His work has been cited over 27,000 times in scientific literature. In addition, we are aware of 48 different academic papers published since 2015 that discuss and/or reference Blueprints, and these publications have been cited (according to Google analytics) more than 3,500 times. We also maintain a publications page on our website listing academic papers written by Blueprints board and staff highlighting the registry’s work.

Conclusion
 
Launched in 1996, Blueprints recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. In preparing for next year and future work, we frequently reflect on our purpose and impact.
 
If you are aware of initiatives, funding mandates, frameworks, media pieces, academic papers or any other efforts that cite Blueprints as a resource for guiding decisions about investments in preventive interventions, please send this information to us at blueprints@colorado.edu.
 
And as always, thank you for your continued interest in and support of Blueprints.

 
Happy Holidays!

Sincerely,


Pamela Buckley, PhD
PI, Blueprints Initiative
Pamela.Buckley@Colorado.edu


Karl G. Hill, PhD
Board Chair and Co-PI
Karl.Hill@Colorado.edu

Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development is developed and managed by the University of Colorado Boulder, Institute of Behavioral Science, with current support from Arnold Ventures and former funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Each intervention included in the Blueprints database has been reviewed carefully by an independent advisory panel that looked at research on the intervention’s impact, practical focus and potential for implementation in public systems.

2022 in Review
By the numbers
 

Below is a summary of our year in review. 
 
Interventions Reviewed & Certified in the Past Year
 

 

Certified in 2022  
Growth Mindset for 9th Graders (Promising)
Added: Jan. 18, 2022
Learn more
 
Transitional Jobs Program – RecycleForce (Promising)
Added: Feb. 25, 2022
Learn more
 
Bounce Back Newham (Promising)
Added: July 27, 2022
Learn more
 
Fostering Healthy Futures for Preteens (Promising)
Added: August 3, 2022
Learn more
 
RealTeen (Promising)
Added: December 7, 2022
Learn more

 
 

Featured Model Program
Family Foundations

Blueprints Certified: 2022 (Moved from Promising to Model)

Ages Served: Infant (0-2)

Program Outcomes: Antisocial-aggressive Behavior, Anxiety, Close Relationships with Parents, Depression, Externalizing, Internalizing

Goal and Target Population: A universal prevention program designed to improve birth outcomes, reduce family aggression, enhance child mental and behavioral health, and enhance parent mental and physical health through promoting coparenting quality among couples at the transition to parenthood.

Learn more about Family Foundations

Featured Promising Program
YouthBuild

Blueprints Certified: 2021

Ages Served: Late Adolescence (15-18) – High School, Early Adulthood (19-24)

Program Outcomes: Dropout/High School Graduation, Employment

Goal and Target Population: A full-time, comprehensive program aiming to help young adults between the ages of 16 and 24 who lack a high school diploma and may have experienced other systemic barriers by building skillsets and mindsets that lead to lifelong learning, livelihood, and leadership.

Learn more about YouthBuild

Blueprints Interventions in the News
Relevant Articles and Helpful Resources

In case you have missed them, here are a few news articles and web postings that discuss Blueprints and/or feature some of our Blueprints Model/Model Plus and Promising Programs:

  • A recent blog post from NIDA director Dr. Volkow highlights four Blueprints-certified programs (Nurse-Family Partnership, Strengthening Families Program: For Parents and Youth 10-14, LifeSkills Training, and Raising Healthy Children) as part of a holistic preventive approach to tackling upstream causes and correlates of substance use disorder.
  • Check out this recent NPR story on the human impact of the LifeSet foster care program. LifeSet is a Blueprints-certified Promising community-based program that assists young people with histories of foster care or juvenile justice involvement in making a successful transition to adulthood by providing intensive, individualized, and clinically focused case management, support, and counseling.
  • A National Conference of State Legislatures (NCSL) briefing series profiled the success of Year Up, a workforce development program that is Blueprints-certified Promising for positive impacts on employment and post-secondary education. Read the brief here.
  • Congratulations Bottom Line on receiving a major grant to continue your incredible work! The Bottom Line College Advising Model is a Blueprints-certified Promising program for a demonstrated impact on college enrollment, persistence, and matriculation among first generation college students.

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© 2022 Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, Regents of the University of Colorado. All rights reserved. 

Our mailing address is:
University of Colorado Boulder | Institute of Behavioral Science
483 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309


Issue No. 22


Welcome to the Blueprints Bulletin



Leadership Letter: 

Several opioid settlements with pharmaceutical companies have been determined with more to come. Many of these resources are being distributed by states with the aim of addressing education, economic, social, and health hardships and creating sustainable innovations to address the opioid epidemic. This month’s newsletter highlights the role of prevention – most notably, scaling evidence-based preventive interventions listed on the Blueprint registry – as one approach embedded within a larger prevention strategy for guiding the effective use of these settlement funds.
 
The Power of Prevention
 
With the current opioid addiction and overdose crisis, many countries around the world have been ramping up treatment and harm-reduction services to mitigate the negative consequences associated with drug use. What is also needed, however, is prevention!
 
Dr. Diana Fishbein of the National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives wrote an op-ed titled “Prevention is our best – and most underrated – weapon against opioids,” emphasizing the critical role for prevention in the battle against the opioid epidemic, which has only been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
Over the past 30 years, prevention research shows that systematically addressing the root causes of behavioral problems among vulnerable populations and promoting protective and supportive environments will steadily divert trajectories away from substance use disorders, including opioid use disorders, later in life. The same risk and protective factors in child and adolescent families, schools, peer groups and neighborhoods that affect smoking, alcohol use and cannabis use are also predictive of advancing to opioid use.
 
Research on periods of vulnerability during youth development and the kinds of social and environmental factors that increase risks associated with substance use have led to the design and testing of numerous evidence-based prevention interventions that have been shown to reduce risk factors as well as increase protective factors. These evidence-based programs have multiple benefits – with some showing decreased or delayed drug experimentation in adolescence and young adulthood.
 
In this 15-minute talk, prevention scientist Dr. Phillip Graham provides a powerful and compelling case explaining the role of evidence-based individual, family, school, and community-level preventive interventions in the prevention of youth substance use and opioid misuse.
 
Opioid Settlement Funds
 
The opioid settlement funds offer a pressing opportunity to promote dissemination and scaling of effective prevention programs across communities and social systems. Settlement funds could save lives and abate lifelong harms from substance use disorders (including opioids) if they are allocated to the most effective preventive interventions targeting youth, families, and/or schools.
 
For this reason, states and jurisdictions should fund initiatives demonstrated by research to work and not fund programs shown not to work.

Investments in early intervention preventive approaches among youth and families will result in significantly lower long-term rates of substance use disorders. 

Blueprints-Certified Preventive Interventions
 
Primary prevention programs listed on the Blueprints registry are designed to improve child development, support families, and enhance school experiences. These programs are developmentally appropriate and many have been shown to either prevent the initiation of substance use or escalation of use.
 
Several organizations have published guidance on how to spend newly allocated opioid settlement funds on substance use prevention and mental health promotion that specifically reference the Blueprints registry. For example: 

  • This opioid policy briefing from the National Prevention Science Coalition recommends the Blueprints registry as part of a Strategy for Preventing Opioid Use Disorders in Communities. The brief reviews current challenges regarding opioid use disorder and provides recommendations and strategies for prevention.
  • Blueprints was referenced in a news piece titled: How To Invest Opioid Settlement And Federal Funding To Prevent Substance Use And Promote Youth Mental Health. Specifically, the news article said: “Too often, programs and interventions are not sustained on a long-term basis because of resource limitations and a lack of infrastructure. To ensure sustainability, recipients of funds should use established evidence-informed programs whenever possible and appropriate, as designated by reputable lists such as Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development.”
  • John Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health released several “Principles for the Use of Funds from the Opioid Litigation,” including to Invest in Youth Prevention using compilations of effective youth primary prevention interventions, such as those listed on the Blueprints registry. 

Blueprints-certified programs can be effectively scaled when integrated into a comprehensive service delivery system based on an assessment of need, delivered at the community level, and supported by a monitoring and evaluation data infrastructure.
 
This previous newsletter highlights examples of effective frameworks for broad dissemination of Blueprints-certified programs.
 
Scaling of evidence-based programs, such as those listed on the Blueprints registry, is also part of a comprehensive national strategy to prevent opioid use disorder launched by the National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives.
 
Conclusion
 
In sum, we believe that effective allocation of state opioid settlement funds toward prevention can and should be used to establish the infrastructure needed for a comprehensive approach to preventing youth substance use and mental health problems.
 
If you are aware of initiatives that use opioid settlement funds for large-scale dissemination of evidence-based preventive interventions listed as Model/Model Plus or Promising on the Blueprints registry, we are interested in profiling your work. Please contact us at blueprints@colorado.edu.
 
And as always, thank you for your continued interest in and support of Blueprints.

Sincerely,


Pamela Buckley, PhD
PI, Blueprints Initiative
Pamela.Buckley@Colorado.edu


Karl G. Hill, PhD
Board Chair and Co-PI
Karl.Hill@Colorado.edu

Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development is developed and managed by the University of Colorado Boulder, Institute of Behavioral Science, with current support from Arnold Ventures and former funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Each intervention included in the Blueprints database has been reviewed carefully by an independent advisory panel that looked at research on the intervention’s impact, practical focus and potential for implementation in public systems.

Blueprints News and Resources 
Opioid Response Resources
 
In lieu of featuring one Model/Model Plus and one Promising program as we have historically done in each newsletter, we are highlighting two Blueprints-certified programs with high-quality evaluation studies demonstrating an impact on reduce of opioid use. These include:
 
Model/Model Plus Programs

Project Towards No Drug Abuse (classroom-based drug prevention program designed for at-risk youth that aims to prevent teen drinking, smoking, marijuana, and other hard drug use).
 
Study 1 – Sussman et al. (1998), Simon et al. (2002)

  • Measured cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine/crack, hallucinogens, stimulants, inhalants, and other drugs (depressants, PCP, steroids, heroin, etc.).
  • Findings showed reductions in hard drug use (including opioids) prevalence rates at 1-year and 4-5-year follow-ups.

Study 2 – Dent et al. (2001)

  • Measured cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine/crack, hallucinogens, stimulants, inhalants, and other drugs (depressants, PCP, steroids, heroin, etc.).
  • Findings showed reductions in hard drug use (including opioids) prevalence rates at 1-year follow-up.

Study 3 – Sussman, Dent & Stacy (2002), Sussman, Dent et al. (2002), Sussman et al. (2003)

  • Measured cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine/crack, hallucinogens, stimulants, inhalants, and other drugs (depressants, PCP, steroids, heroin, etc.).
  • Findings showed reduced problem behavior rates (i.e., hard drug use, alcohol use, tobacco, and marijuana use) at 1-year follow-up, and reduced hard drug use at 2-year follow-up.

Study 4 – Sun et al. (2008)

  • Measured cigarettes, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine/crack, hallucinogens, stimulants, inhalants, and other drugs (depressants, PCP, steroids, heroin, etc.).
  • Findings showed reductions in hard drug use (including opioids) frequency at 1-year follow-up. 

Promising Programs

PROSPER (delivery system that attempts to foster implementation of evidence-based youth and family interventions, complete with ongoing needs assessments, monitoring of implementation quality and partnership functions, and evaluation of intervention outcomes).
 
Study 1 – Spoth et al. (2007, 2015), Redmond et al. (2009)

  • Measured “Illicit Substance Index,” including marijuana, methamphetamines, ecstasy, opioids, and medications prescribed for someone else, as well as alcohol and cigarettes.
  • Findings showed lower rates of lifetime use of gateway drugs (alcohol, cigarette, marijuana) and illicit drugs (marijuana, meth, ecstasy, prescription misuse, opioids), and lower rates of marijuana and inhalant use in the past year.

Blueprints Talks 
Dr. Karl G. Hill, Blueprints board chair, is involved in several talks related to the prevention of drug use and opioid misuse, including:

  • The 2022 National High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area (HIDTA) Program Prevention Summit, titled “Mind the Message – Equipping Communities with Evidence-Informed Communication Strategies for Youth Substance Use Prevention.” In this talk, Dr. Hill will describe how to prepare communities for upstream prevention. The event is on October 6, 2022, and registration is free.
  • The Partnership to End Addiction Summit on October 26, 2022 titled “Rethinking Substance Use Prevention: An Earlier and Broader Approach.” Dr. Hill is part of a small group of thought leaders with expertise in early childhood determinants of health and well-being invited to this meeting, which is intended to bridge the gap and break down silos among various fields within and beyond substance use/addiction that share the goal of promoting child health and resilience.
  • The Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) annual conference held in July 2022. Dr. Hill served on a panel titled “Using Evidence-Based Prevention to Break the Generational Cycle of Drug Use.”
  • The Prescription Drug and Heroin Summit, held in April 2022, in which Dr. Hill featured Blueprints as a guide to breaking intergenerational cycles of addiction and discussed the paper  titled “Effects of Childhood Preventive Intervention Across Two Generations.”

Previous Blueprints virtual talks can be found under News & Events on our website.

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© 2022 Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, Regents of the University of Colorado. All rights reserved. 

Our mailing address is:
University of Colorado Boulder | Institute of Behavioral Science
483 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309


Issue No. 21


Welcome to the Blueprints Bulletin



Leadership Letter:

Blueprints is a privately funded nonprofit organization housed in the Prevention Science Program within the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder.
 
We are the longest-standing registry of evidence-based interventions and internationally recognized for our work in the field.
 
In 2018, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and World Health Organization suggested that national standards globally enforce a requirement of implementing evidence-based strategies only by utilizing registries such as Blueprints, citing us by name (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime and the World Health Organization, 2018, p. 42).

 
Funding History
 
Blueprints began in 1996 as an initiative of the State of Colorado, with initial funding from the Colorado Division of Criminal Justice, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and the Pennsylvania Commission on Crime and Delinquency.
 
Blueprints was later supported (starting in 2010) by the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF) to expand the registry’s focus beyond violence prevention to include positive behavioral outcomes.
 
Following AECF, Arnold Ventures has funded Blueprints core operations, which include:

  1. Conducting Blueprints reviews (see Blueprints review process).
  2. Providing a detailed account on the Blueprints website of each certified intervention (i.e., those that receive a rating of Promising, Model or Model Plus).
  3. Support of other communication activities designed to promote the Blueprints registry as a resource for scientifically proven and scalable interventions (e.g., through social media, a quarterly e-newsletter, presentations, etc.).

With support from Arnold Ventures, Blueprints also lists information on all interventions we review and has one page on our website for identifying certified interventions (i.e., those rated as Promising, Model or Model Plus) and a separate page for non-certified interventions to reduce confusion and increase transparency of the Blueprints review process.
 
Continuation Grant
 
Arnold Ventures recently awarded Blueprints a two-year grant (starting July 1, 2022) to support our core operations. In addition, Arnold Ventures is providing funding for Blueprints to:

  • Communicate important findings on effective interventions to the practitioner, policy, funder, and research communities by extending and strengthening the Blueprints rating system to incorporate meta-analysis into its thorough and reflective review process, thus assisting the Blueprints Advisory Board in making recommendations for Model and Model Plus interventions that are ready for scale.
  • Increase the use of rigorous evidence through partnerships and nonpartisan educational efforts focused on promoting the use of evidence about what works to increase the effectiveness of U.S. social spending and improve people’s lives.

We are deeply grateful to all our funders, past and present, for their investment in Blueprints – demonstrating their commitment to promoting a strong scientific standard of evidence for identifying effective prevention interventions that provide a high probability of success when taken to scale in communities.
 
Part of Arnold Ventures’ mission is to invest in evidence-based solutions that maximize opportunity and minimize injustice. With this continuation grant to Blueprints, Arnold Ventures adds to its portfolio of strategies designed to increase the effectiveness of social spending using rigorous evidence about what works. Learn more about Arnold Ventures’ work in correcting systemic failures through evidence-based solutions.
 
And, as always, thank you to all of you for your continued interest in and support of Blueprints!
 
Sincerely,


Pamela Buckley, PhD
PI, Blueprints Initiative
Pamela.Buckley@Colorado.edu


Karl G. Hill, PhD
Board Chair and Co-PI
Karl.Hill@Colorado.edu

Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development is housed at the University of Colorado Boulder, Institute of Behavioral Science, with current support from Arnold Ventures

Featured Model Program
Early College High School Model 

Blueprints Certified: 2018

Ages Served: Late Adolescence (15-18) – High School

Program Outcomes: Academic Performance, Post-Secondary Education 

A high school model designed to increase students’ access to a postsecondary credential, particularly for underrepresented students. The goal is to minimize challenges in the transition to postsecondary education for students for whom access has historically been problematic.

Learn more about Early College High School Model

Featured Promising Program
Cannabis eCHECKUP TO GO 

Blueprints Certified: 2021

Ages Served: Early Adulthood (19-22) 

Program Outcomes: Marijuana/Cannabis 

A brief, web-based personalized feedback program that aims to reduce the harms associated with cannabis use in college students by increasing protective behavioral strategies and correcting misperceived norms for cannabis use.

Learn more about Cannabis eCHECKUP TO GO

Blueprints Talks

Blueprints Interventions in the News
Relevant articles and helpful resources
 
In case you have missed them, here are a few articles and web postings that discuss Blueprints and/or feature some of our Blueprints’ Model, Model Plus and Promising Interventions:

  • This recent National Public Radio story provides a human perspective on the impact of the LifeSet foster care program. LifeSet is a Blueprints-certified Promising community-based program that assists young people with histories of foster care or juvenile justice involvement in making a successful transition to adulthood by providing intensive, individualized, and clinically focused case management, support, and counseling.
  • A recent piece from MDRC mentions Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP), a Blueprints Model Plus program, as an example of an evidence-based intervention that helps support college completion among low-income young adults. Read the full commentary piece.
  • Communities that Care is a prevention system that is Blueprints-certified Promising for reducing adolescent delinquency and substance misuse through the selection and implementation of evidence-based interventions tailored to a community’s unique needs. Read this article about how one CTC coalition refocused on prioritizing health equity and racial justice in their work.

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© 2022 Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, Regents of the University of Colorado. All rights reserved. 

Our mailing address is:
University of Colorado Boulder | Institute of Behavioral Science
483 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309


Issue No. 20


Welcome to the Blueprints Bulletin

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Leadership Letter:

We are devoting this newsletter to acknowledging our Blueprints Advisory Board members, both past and present.
 
Launched in 1996, Blueprints is the longest-standing online clearinghouse of evidence-based interventions. Throughout most of our tenure, our review process has been supported by a distinguished Advisory Board of experts in prevention science content areas, evaluation methodology, intervention design and testing, and statistical methods. Each certified intervention listed on the Blueprints registry has been reviewed carefully by this independent advisory panel that looks at research on the intervention’s impact, practical focus, and potential for implementation in public systems.
 
We want to welcome our new Advisory Board members, who include:

  •  Elizabeth Stuart, PhD, Bloomberg Professor of American Health, Associate Dean for Education and Professor in the Department of Mental Health, with joint appointments in the departments of Biostatistics and Health Policy and Management at Johns Hopkins University.
  • Elizabeth Tipton, PhD, Associate Professor of Statistics, and Faculty Fellow in the Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.

These individuals will be joining an accomplished group of scholars who currently sit on the Blueprints Advisory Board, including:

  • Abigail Fagan, PhD, Professor, Department of Sociology, Criminology & Law, University of Florida.
  • Frances Gardner, DPhil, Professor of Child and Family Psychology, Fellow of Wolfson College Centre for Evidence-Based Intervention, Centre for Evidence-Based Intervention, Department of Social Policy & Intervention, Oxford University.
  • Larry V. Hedges, PhD, Board of Trustees Professor of Statistics and Social Policy and Faculty Fellow, Institute for Policy Research at Northwestern University.
  • Karl G. Hill, PhD, Professor, Department of Psychology and Neuroscience and Director of the Prevention Science Program in the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder.
  • Velma McBride Murry, PhD, Professor, Departments of Health Policy and Human and Organizational Development, Vanderbilt University Medical Center and Vanderbilt University.
  • Patrick H. Tolan, PhD, the Charles S. Robb Professor of Education at the University of Virginia in the School of Education and Human Development and Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Neurobehavioral Sciences in the School of Medicine.

 We also want to thank members of the Blueprints Advisory Board who recently retired, including:

  • Thomas Cook, PhD, Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Northwestern University and Emeritus Fellow at their Institute for Policy Research, where he was formerly the Joan and Sarepta Harrison Chair of Ethics and Justice. 
  • Delbert Elliott, PhD, Blueprints founder and Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Sociology, research professor in the Institute of Behavioral Science at the University of Colorado Boulder and founding director of the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence.
  • Denise Gottfredson, PhD, Professor Emeritus at the University of Maryland Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology.
  • David Hawkins, PhD, the Endowed Professor of Prevention Emeritus in the School of Social Work at the University of Washington and Founding Director of the Social Development Research Group.

 The Blueprints Review Process
 
The Blueprints website provides information about our review process, which is illustrated below.  
 

 
We thank and acknowledge members of the Blueprints Advisory Board whose collective knowledge, critical thinking and analysis increases the credibility of the ratings and interventions we certify as “Promising,” “Model,” and “Model Plus” on the Blueprints registry.
 

Nominate an Intervention
 
If you would like us to review a study of a prevention program that serves youth (ages 0-25), families and/or communities, please send all evaluation articles/papers to: blueprints@colorado.edu.
 
More information on nominating an intervention for Blueprints review can be found on our website.

 
As always, thank you for your continued interest in and support of Blueprints.
 
Sincerely,


Pamela Buckley, PhD
Principal Investigator
Institute of Behavioral Science
University of Colorado Boulder
Pamela.Buckley@Colorado.edu


Karl G. Hill, PhD
Co-Principal Investigator
Chair of the Blueprints Board
Institute of Behavioral Science
University of Colorado Boulder
Karl.Hill@Colorado.edu

Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development is housed at the University of Colorado Boulder, Institute of Behavioral Science, with current support from Arnold Ventures

Featured Model Program
ParentCorps 

Blueprints Certified: 2018

Ages Served: Early Childhood (3-4) – Preschool

Program Outcomes: Academic Performance, Externalizing, Internalizing 

A multi-level intervention designed for pre-kindergarten children living in low-income neighborhoods to create safe, nurturing and predictable environments at home and in the classroom and improve relationships and communication between parents and teachers.

Learn more about ParentCorps

Featured Promising Program
Growth Mindset for 9th Graders 

Blueprints Certified: 2022

Ages Served: Late Adolescence (15-18) –  High School 

Program Outcomes: Academic Performance 

An online program for ninth-grade students as they transition to high school to improve grade point average and willingness to take difficult course work by changing the mindset toward learning.

Learn more about Growth Mindset for 9th Graders

Blueprints Virtual Talks

  • Our PI Dr. Pamela Buckley and Blueprints Advisory Board member Dr. Velma McBride Murry recently gave a talk at the Prevention Science Methodology Group Virtual Grand Rounds as part of a series titled “Systemic Racism and Prevention Science: Enhancing Social Justice to Achieve Health Equity Series.” This presentation was called Examining the Representation of Racial and Ethnic Minority Groups in Preventive Intervention Research, and it provided information on a study in which the Blueprints team reviewed and evaluated the nature, size, and scope of extant research across an 11-year period involving representation of racial and ethnic minority groups in preventive intervention research, thus serving as a vehicle for decision-making regarding the generalizability of evidence-based interventions. The presentation provided an overview of preliminary findings, presented recommendations for reporting race and ethnicity in prevention interventions studies, and concluded with a discussion aimed at identifying specific areas where additional research would be beneficial and gaps in services where new intervention development is needed. Download slides and view the webinar.

Blueprints Interventions in the News
Relevant articles and helpful resources
 
In case you have missed them, here are a few articles and web postings that discuss Blueprints and/or feature some of our Blueprints’ Model, Model Plus and Promising Programs:

  • A new opioid policy briefing from the National Prevention Science Coalition recommends six Blueprints-certified interventions as part of a Strategy for Preventing Opioid Use Disorders in Communities. The brief reviews current challenges regarding opioid use disorder and provides recommendations and strategies for prevention. An excerpt:

    The majority of adolescents will engage in substance use (e.g., nicotine/tobacco, alcohol, cannabis) between the ages of 12-21. While most will not develop a substance use disorder (SUD), substance use of any kind during adolescence is concerning given the detrimental impact of substances on the developing brain. The development of SUDs, including opioid use disorders, is often preceded by a variety of other problems including academic failure, antisocial behavior, anxiety, depression, and traumatic stress. These problems often arise due to environments within the home, school, or neighborhood that are unsafe, under-resourced, or otherwise harmful to social, academic, and behavioral development. One of the most effective prevention approaches involves the implementation of early intervention strategies that prevent problems from occurring or tackles them head-on when they do appear before problems worsen.

  • On a related note, Blueprints was referenced in a news piece titled: How To Invest Opioid Settlement And Federal Funding To Prevent Substance Use And Promote Youth Mental Health. Specifically, the news article said: “Too often, programs and interventions are not sustained on a long-term basis because of resource limitations and a lack of infrastructure. To ensure sustainability, recipients of funds should use established evidence-informed programs whenever possible and appropriate, as designated by reputable lists such as Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development.”
  • Blueprints was also mentioned in a newly published article examining the role and influence of evidence-based program registries in state policymaking.

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© 2022 Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, Regents of the University of Colorado. All rights reserved. 

Our mailing address is:
University of Colorado Boulder | Institute of Behavioral Science
483 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309


Issue No. 19


Welcome to the Blueprints Bulletin



Leadership Letter: 

In our last newsletter, we explained how we apply our standards of evidence (Steeger et al., 2021) in rating interventions with an evidence base that is strong enough to be recommended by Blueprints for large-scale adoption (please click here for a summary of our review process).
 
Obtaining desired outcomes from scaling up Blueprints-certified interventions, however, requires multiple layers of support, including (for example): (1) adequate and appropriately structured funding; (2) partnerships with stakeholders at every level to ensure necessary support for program implementation and continuing service provision; and (3) community engagement to support local service delivery.
 
Several effective frameworks for broad dissemination have been established to ensure the impact of Blueprints-certified programs on a large scale.
 
The focus of this newsletter is highlighting examples of these efforts, with the goal of providing a “blueprint” for national, state, and/or local initiatives that might want to adopt a similar approach.
 
Statewide Public/Private Initiatives to Implement a Portfolio of Blueprints-Certified Interventions
 
In Colorado (home to the Prevention Science Program at the Institute of Behavioral Science at CU Boulder, which houses Blueprints), examples include:

  1. Invest in Kids (IIK), a nonprofit organization that for over two decades has worked alongside Colorado communities to adopt, implement, and successfully scale proven programs that have the greatest long-term impact on young children and families experiencing poverty. These Blueprints programs, which IIK sustains via federal, state, and local grants and investments from private foundations and individual donors, include: 1) Nurse-Family Partnership® (Model), a relationship-based program, delivered in the home, that partners highly-trained registered nurses with first-time mothers and their babies and is designed to improve prenatal and child rearing practices and parent self-sufficiency through the child’s second birthday; 2) The Incredible Years® (Promising), a prevention program designed to increase a child’s success at school and at home by promoting positive parent, teacher, and child relationships; and most recently, 3) Child First® (Promising), a home-based two-generation mental health-focused program which works to heal and protect young children and their families from the devastating effects of chronic stress and trauma.
  2. Colorado Equitable Economic Mobility Initiative (CEEMI), a newly formed independent nonprofit  collaborating with public and private partners to create a more equitable economic ecosystem by blending public, private, and philanthropic funds to enroll Coloradans facing poverty in effective employment programs. CEEMI is working to scale up two Blueprints-certified programs: 1) Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (Model Plus), a post-secondary program addressing potential barriers to academic success and promoting credit accumulation and associate degree completion through comprehensive advisement and career and tutoring services provided by dedicated advisers; and 2) Year Up (Promising), a training and internship program that helps young people with limited post-secondary education get high-quality jobs by learning to work with technology, developing employment skills, and obtaining internships. Year Up is also one of the workforce programs backed by strong evidence of effectiveness identified by the National Conference of State Legislatures, and their new Center for Results-Driven Governing, for policymakers to consider as states leverage the American Rescue Plan (ARP) in seeking ways to re-employ workers and build a workforce that will help lead their economic recovery in this post-coronavirus economy.  
  3. Safe Communities Safe Schools (SCSS), an initiative within the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence at the University of Colorado Boulder that follows a research-based model to build a school’s unique capacity to reduce violence by promoting social, emotional, and physical safety. Included in the SCSS Model is support that allows schools to (1) measure and strengthen their readiness to adopt evidence-based interventions, including those listed on the Blueprints registry, (2) build high-functioning multi-disciplinary teams to champion the work, and (3) receive tailored tools, processes, and technical assistance to support high-quality implementation.
  4. Communities That Care (CTC), a framework which aims to reduce adolescent substance misuse, violence, and depression by implementing from a menu of strategies particular programs, practices and/or policies—including Blueprints-certified interventions—that have demonstrated effectiveness in reducing risk factors and enhancing protective factors. The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) adopted CTC in 2016 as a statewide prevention model. CDPHE currently funds 30 CTC communities across the state.

National Philanthropic Foundation/Community Partnerships Helping Scale Blueprints-Certified Interventions
 
Two examples of efforts to scale evidence-based interventions, including many on the Blueprints registry, funded by national philanthropic organizations include:

  1. Evidence2Success®, which  is an initiative of the Annie E. Casey Foundation that brings together public-system leaders and community members to understand how children are doing with the help of data; select evidence-based programs, including those from Blueprints to enhance strengths and address needs; and develop financing and action plans to support the ongoing use of those proven programs. The initiative began with a pilot site in Providence, RI in 2012 and has since expanded to Mobile, Alabama; Selma, Alabama; Kearns Township, Salt Lake County, Utah; Memphis, Tennessee; and Miami, Florida. While scale is sometimes more quickly achieved through a focus on system-wide reform and legislative change, Evidence2Success is built at the intersection of place-based change and system change – with a strong value on system change informed by community input and leadership. As part of the Evidence2Success framework, public systems and schools commit up front to redirecting a portion of their combined resources for children. These partners work with a team of finance and administration professionals to identify funding sources within their agency budgets and coordinate funding to invest in programs that respond to the outcomes prioritized by the partnership. In recent years, the Foundation has carefully tracked the resources leveraged by sites in support of Blueprints programs and supporting infrastructure. Since 2017, sites have leveraged more than $6 million across child welfare, juvenile justice, school district, public health, social service, city, county, and substance abuse and mental health systems. The addition of related activities, such as clinical services and trauma trainings in Providence, raises the total amount leveraged to $15 million.
  2. Arnold VenturesMoving the Needle initiative, which seeks to spur expanded implementation of programs with credible evidence of meaningful positive effects in order to make significant headway against U.S. social problems. Specifically, the initiative is designed to encourage state or local jurisdictions, or other entities, to: (1) Adopt social programs shown in well-conducted randomized controlled trials (RCTs) to produce large, sustained effects on important life outcomes (see attachment 1 in the RFP for the list of eligible programs; many are listed on the Blueprints registry); (2) Implement these programs on a sizable scale with close adherence to their key features; and (3) Determine, through a replication RCT, whether the large effects found in prior research are successfully reproduced so as to move the needle on important social problems. Arnold Ventures (AV) has provided more than $38 million in funding over the past five years to help scale up and conduct replication trials of these interventions. Click here to listen to a 10-minute interview with David Anderson, VP of AV’s Evidence-Based Policy Initiative, for insights about building credible evidence in social policy.

Reallocation of Criminal Justice Dollars to Prevention
 
The Virginia Department of Juvenile Justice (Virginia DJJ) built a more robust continuum of services, with a focus on implementing evidence-based and evidence-informed programs and services statewide, thereby reducing the overuse of juvenile correctional centers and developing alternatives to incarceration. The Blueprints registry is identified within the Virginia DJJ’s guidance document as a resource in selecting effective prevention programs ready for large-scale adoption. As a result of Virginia DJJ’s commitment to evidence-based programs and high-quality implementation, youth and families who are involved with the juvenile justice system anywhere in the Commonwealth now have access to one or more Model/Model Plus programs. Click here for a summary report on Virginia DJJ’s Transformation over the past five years.
 
Conclusion
 
Attempts to scale inconclusive, ineffective, or harmful programs are a waste of time, money, and opportunity. As such, we advocate for identifying and implementing interventions that are known to work, that can be implemented at scale with fidelity, and that are cost effective. Blueprints provides a trusted source of accessible information on experimentally proven interventions recommended for large-scale implementation that meet a high evidentiary standard based upon a rigorous systematic review of all the research evidence. This newsletter provides just a few models for scaling social programs that produce important improvements in people’s lives.
 
If you are aware of additional models or frameworks for large-scale dissemination of evidence-based interventions, including those on the Blueprints registry, we would be interested in profiling your work. Please contact us at blueprints@colorado.edu.
 
And as always, thank you for your continued interest in and support of Blueprints.
 
Happy Holidays!

Sincerely,


Pamela Buckley, PhD
Principal Investigator
Institute of Behavioral Science
University of Colorado Boulder
Pamela.Buckley@Colorado.edu


Karl G. Hill, PhD
Co-Principal Investigator
Chair of the Blueprints Board
Institute of Behavioral Science
University of Colorado Boulder
Karl.Hill@Colorado.edu

Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development is hosted by the University of Colorado Boulder, Institute of Behavioral Science, with current support from Arnold Ventures and former funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Each intervention included in the Blueprints database has been reviewed carefully by an independent advisory panel that looked at research on the intervention’s impact, practical focus and potential for implementation in public systems.

2021 in Review
By the numbers
 
Below is a summary of our year in review. 
 
Interventions Reviewed & Certified in the Past Year
 
•  Number of Unique Interventions Reviewed = 47
•  Number of Individuals Articles or Reports Reviewed = 191
•  Number of Interventions Certified = 5
 
Coping Power Universal (Promising)
Added: Feb. 18, 2021
Learn more
 
YouthBuild (Promising)
Added: Mar. 24, 2021
Learn more
 
EveryDay Intervention (Promising)
Added: Jun. 4, 2021
Learn more
 
Cannabis eCHECKUP TO GO (Promising)
Added Jul. 7, 2021
Learn more
 
ASSISTments (Promising)
Added Nov. 22, 2021
Learn more

Blueprints Virtual Talks 

  • Our PI Dr. Pamela Buckley gave a talk to the Prevention Technology Transfer Center Network, which serves to improve implementation and delivery of effective substance abuse prevention programs. The webinar first described how an evidence base for an intervention is built. It then presented an overview of Blueprints, followed by a demonstration on navigating the registry’s website and tailoring searches to locate effective interventions that fit local communities’ unique circumstances. It concluded with a discussion on best practices in making adaptations to effective interventions to increase cultural appropriateness without modifying core components, or the essential intervention activities deemed necessary to produce desired outcomes. Watch the webinar by clicking here.
  • Drs. Pamela Buckley and Karl Hill gave a talk at the Prevention Science Methodology Group Virtual Grand Rounds on Addressing Health Equity and Social Justice within Prevention Registries. The webinar first presented an overview of the Blueprints registry, and then discussed concerns regarding adaptation/cultural relevance that registry staff and users encounter with increasing frequency. Next, an overview of a recently funded project was presented that begins to address these concerns within Blueprints. While lack of representation of youth of color in health-related research studies has been well documented, a critical evaluation of this omission has not been undertaken to substantiate this claim. This new project involves reviewing the scope of extant research on representation of ethnic minority groups in preventive intervention research, thus serving as a vehicle for decision-making regarding the generalizability of evidence-based interventions listed on clearinghouse websites (such as Blueprints). Go here to download slides and view the webinar.

Blueprints Interventions in the News 
Relevant articles and helpful resources

In case you have missed them, here are a few articles and web postings that discuss Blueprints and/or feature some of our Blueprints’ Model/Model Plus and Promising Programs:

  • MDRC (a nonprofit, nonpartisan education and social policy research organization) has released a report for state agencies and academic institutions on how and why to implement evidence-based programs that support college completion, and the timing couldn’t be better: Such programs could get federal support as part of the $3.5 trillion Build Back Better Act. The report highlights ASAP (a Blueprints Model Plus program) as an example of an evidence-based, multifaceted support program that – while expensive –  can reduce the cost per degree. Accelerated Study in Associate Programs (ASAP) is a post-secondary college-based prevention program that aims to address potential barriers to academic success and promote credit accumulation and associate degree completion in college students through comprehensive advisement and career and tutoring services provided by dedicated advisers. Click here to read the report.
  • Blueprints was recommended by the United Nations Office on Drug and Crime (UNODC) as they updated international standards for drug and crime prevention. The UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime & World Health Organization, 2018) suggested that national standards globally enforce a requirement of implementing evidence-based strategies only by utilizing registries such as Blueprints, citing us by name. Read more here, including page 42 where Blueprints is cited.  
  • Family Foundations, certified as a Promising program based on an experimental study conducted by Feinberg et al. (2014), is a a universal prevention program to improve mother, child, and birth outcomes through promoting coparenting quality among couples who are expecting their first child. Watch this 3-minute video to learn more.

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© 2021 Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development, Regents of the University of Colorado. All rights reserved. 

Our mailing address is:
University of Colorado Boulder | Institute of Behavioral Science
483 UCB, Boulder, CO 80309


Issue No. 18


Welcome to the Blueprints Bulletin



Leadership Letter: 

We are excited to share with you an important milestone Blueprints recently reached. But first, a quick summary of our history will help frame the discussion.
 
Blueprints History

The Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development mission is to provide a comprehensive registry of scientifically proven and scalable interventions that prevent or reduce the likelihood of antisocial behavior and promote a healthy course of youth development and adult maturity. Those interventions are rated as either Promising or Model/Model Plus.
 
Originally started as Blueprints for Violence Prevention, Blueprints was one of the earliest efforts to establish a clear scientific standard for evaluating the evidence of an intervention’s effectiveness, implementing a rigorous expert review process and certifying those interventions that met this standard. Launched in 1996 by internationally renowned researcher Dr. Delbert S. Elliott (who also founded the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence in 1992), the early years of Blueprints focused on identifying programs that were effective in addressing violence and drug use outcomes. Since its inception, Blueprints has expanded its scope to include mental and physical health, self-regulation, educational achievement, and other positive developmental outcomes.

Celebrating an Important Milestone: 100 Certified Interventions!

In August 2021, Blueprints reached an important milestone by certifying its 100th intervention!
 
Of these, 18 are rated Model/Model Plus and 82 are Promising.
 
The Blueprints website provides an interactive search feature to identify Blueprints-certified interventions based on specific criteria that allows users to browse through a wide range of interventions that match those criteria.
 
Model and Model Plus interventions are listed separately from Promising interventions.
 
This is because Model and Model Plus interventions have demonstrated efficacy for changing outcomes over time and are recommended by Blueprints for large-scale implementation.
 
Promising interventions show promise of efficacy but require follow-up research before being recommended for large-scale adoption.
 

How does an Intervention receive a Rating of Model or Model Plus?

The Blueprints registry standard for a Model rating requires: 

  1. A theoretical rationale/logic model
  2. One or more high quality randomized control trials
  3. An experimental replication
  4. Sustainability of effects for at least one-year post intervention
  5. No evidence of negative or harmful effects
  6. The organizational capacity to provide materials, training, and information for new users to adopt and implement the model intervention with fidelity

Blueprints also has a Model Plus rating, which requires at least one trial by an evaluation team independent of the program developer and his or her colleagues. In sum, the logic is that to consider any program as ready to be relied on in practice or for scaling up, there should be a clearly specified theoretical rationale, reliable evidence of positive, sustained impact based on a sound experimental research design, and at least one replication of positive findings.
 
A high-quality quasi-experimental design (QED) can meet Blueprints standards, but to earn a Model or Model Plus rating, effective interventions must have demonstrated positive effects in at least one high-quality RCT.
 
The Blueprints website provides more information about our standards and review process.

Testing Promising Interventions for Scale-up
 
While most certified interventions listed on the Blueprints website are rated Promising (82 out of 100), several are currently being tested for replication.
 
Under the Research Grants Focused on Systematic Replication (84.305R) competition, the Institute of Education Sciences (IES), which is the research arm of the US Department of Education, will support systematic replication studies of interventions that have produced beneficial effects on education outcomes in one or more rigorous causal-impact studies. We are aware of two replications of Blueprints Promising programs that IES is currently funding:

  • Targeted Reading Instruction (TRI, formerly called Targeted Reading Intervention) is a teacher professional development program designed to help classroom teachers acquire key diagnostic reading instruction strategies differentiated to meet the exact needs of individual students who are struggling with early reading. Blueprints certified the program based on an RCT conducted by Amendum et al. (2011). Dr. Robin Wisniewski from RTI International received a 5-year grant (07/01/2021 – 06/30/2026) that will follow first grade students and teachers for an additional 2 years beyond the intervention to test TRI’s long-term impacts on reading achievement.
  • Whole Number Foundations Level K (Roots) is a 50-session small group mathematics intervention delivered as a pull-out program during the regular school day. The aim is to help strengthen whole number concepts and operations skills in students at risk for developing long-term mathematics difficulties. Blueprints certified the intervention based on an RCT conducted by Clarke et al. (2016). Dr. Ben Clarke from the University of Oregon received a 5-year grant (07/01/2020 – 06/30/2025) to conduct a replication study of ROOTS for students at risk for mathematics learning disabilities across school types and student populations intentionally selected to differ from previous efficacy studies.

Arnold Ventures, a philanthropy dedicated to tackling some of the most pressing problems in the United States, has provided support for RCTs of programs across the spectrum of social policy whose prior evidence shows potential for sizable effects on education, earnings, crime, and other important outcomes. Not only has Arnold Ventures provided support for the Blueprints registry, but it has also supported replications of several interventions rated as Promising on Blueprints:

  • Big Brothers Big Sisters of America (BBBSA) is a community mentoring program that matches a volunteer adult mentor to an at-risk child or adolescent to delay or reduce antisocial behaviors and improve academic success. The program was certified based on an RCT conducted by Grossman & Tierney (1998). Dr. David DuBois from the University of Illinois at Chicago and Dr. Carla Herrera (an independent consultant) are conducting a multi-site RCT with a sample of 20 BBBSA agencies nationwide (the grant term runs from 2016-2024).
  • Career Academies, which are school-based programs designed to provide students with the credentials and skills needed to make successful transitions to post-secondary education and careers, was certified by Blueprints based on a multi-site RCT conducted in a diverse set of urban and small-city high schools in California, Texas, and several cities on the east coast (Kemple & Snipes, 2000; Kemple, 2004; Kemple & Wilner, 2008). MDRC is conducting a replication of Career Academies in California high schools. The term of the grant is from 2017-2032.
  • Child First, a two-generation home visitation program which works to heal and protect young children and their families from the devastating effects of chronic stress and trauma, was certified based on an RCT conducted by Lowell et al. (2011). With support from Arnold Ventures and The Duke Endowment, MDRC is leading an experimental study that aims to replicate the findings from the earlier study in multiple locations across Connecticut and North Carolina.
  • EAAA (Enhanced Assess, Acknowledge, Act) Sexual Assault Resistance Education is a four-unit program to help first-year college women resist acquaintance sexual assault by providing them with information and resistance training. The intervention was certified based on an RCT conducted at three universities in Canada by Senn et al. (2015). Dr. Koss from the University of Arizona is leading a multi-site RCT that includes a one-year follow-up across five U.S. universities.
  • Rochester Forensic Assertive Community Treatment (R-FACT) is an outpatient treatment program to reduce recidivism and promote recovery among justice-involved adults with a serious mental illness that was certified based on an RCT conducted in New York by Lamberti et al. (2017). The University of Rochester is conducting an RCT to evaluate the R-FACT model in Minnesota. The grant runs from 2018 to 2025.
  • Year Up is a training and internship program that helps young people with limited post-secondary education get high-quality jobs by learning to work with technology, developing employment skills, and obtaining internships. The program was certified based on an RCT conducted by Fein & Hamadyk (2018) in eight sites across the US. Dr. David Fein of Abt Associates is leading long-term follow-ups to two RCTs of adaptations of the Year Up model, and the grant runs from 2019-2022.

Nominate an Intervention
 
If you are aware of an intervention Blueprints has rated as Promising that is being replicated and you would like us to review the study, please send all evaluation articles/papers to: blueprints@colorado.edu.
 
And if you are a funding agency awarding grants to replicate intervention programs designed to promote healthy youth development, please contact us as well. We would be interested in profiling your work and any interventions from the Blueprints registry you are funding to replicate.
 
More information on nominating an intervention for Blueprints review can be found on our website by clicking here.
 
As always, thank you for your continued interest in and support of Blueprints.

Sincerely,


Pamela Buckley, PhD
Principal Investigator
Institute of Behavioral Science
University of Colorado Boulder
Pamela.Buckley@Colorado.edu


Karl G. Hill, PhD
Co-Principal Investigator
Chair of the Blueprints Board
Institute of Behavioral Science
University of Colorado Boulder
Karl.Hill@Colorado.edu

Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development is hosted by the University of Colorado Boulder, Institute of Behavioral Science, with current support from Arnold Ventures and former funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation. Each intervention included in the Blueprints database has been reviewed carefully by an independent advisory panel that looked at research on the intervention’s impact, practical focus and potential for implementation in public systems.

RCTs Headed by Blueprints Staff (with support from Arnold Ventures):  

  • RCT evaluation of LifeSkills Training to prevent substance abuse in high school students. This project, headed by Drs. Karl Hill and Christine Steeger, will evaluate whether the Botvin LifeSkills Training (LST) Middle School Program – a Blueprints Model Plus program that has been shown in rigorous evaluations to substantially reduce youth substance use – can produce similar impacts when provided directly to high school students in a more abbreviated and potentially more scalable format. Blueprints PI Dr. Pamela Buckley is also consulting on the project. Click here to read more about the study.
  • RCT evaluation of Functional Family Therapy-Gangs (FFT-G). This study, headed by Dr. David Pyrooz (Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Colorado Boulder) and Blueprints PI Dr. Pamela Buckley, is an RCT of Functional Family Therapy–Gangs (FFT–G), a therapeutic intervention for justice-involved youth and their families. A previous, well-conducted RCT of FFT-G (i.e., certified by Blueprints) with a sample of 129 juveniles on probation and at risk of gang involvement in Philadelphia found that FFT–G led to statistically significant reductions in the percent of youth with drug charges and the percent of youth adjudicated for any offense during the 18-month period following random assignment (Gottfredson et al., 2018). Under this current project, the researchers will replicate FFT–G in two judicial districts in the Denver, CO area with a sample of 400 juveniles on probation determined to be gang-embedded. Click here to read more about the study. 

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Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development
University of Colorado Boulder
Institute of Behavioral Science
UCB 483, Boulder, CO 80309

Email: blueprints@colorado.edu

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Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development is
currently funded by Arnold Ventures (formerly the Laura and John Arnold Foundation) and historically has received funding from the Annie E. Casey Foundation and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.