Six-Year Sustainability of Evidence-Based Intervention Implementation Quality by Community-University Partnerships: The PROSPER Study

There is a knowledge gap concerning how well community-based teams fare in implementing evidence-based interventions (EBIs) over many years, a gap that is important to fill because sustained high quality EBI implementation is essential to public health impact. The current study addresses this gap by evaluating data from PROSPER, a community-university intervention partnership model, in the context of a randomized-control trial of 28 communities. Specifically, it examines community teams' sustainability of implementation quality on a range of measures, for both family-focused and school-based EBIs. Average adherence ratings approached 90% for family-focused and school-based EBIs, across as many as 6 implementation cohorts. Additional indicators of implementation quality similarly showed consistently positive results. Correlations of the implementation quality outcomes with a number of characteristics of community teams and intervention leaders were calculated to explore their potential relevance to sustained implementation quality. Though several relationships attained statistical significance at particular points in time, none were stable across cohorts. The role of PROSPER's continuous, proactive technical assistance in producing the positive results is discussed.     

Mixed Picture of Readiness for Adoption of Evidence-Based Prevention Programs in Communities: Exploratory Surveys of State Program Delivery Systems

An emerging literature highlights the potential for broader dissemination of evidence‐based prevention programs in communities through existing state systems, such as the land grant university Extension outreach system and departments of public education and health (DOE–DPH). This exploratory study entailed surveying representatives of the national Extension system and DOE–DPH, to evaluate dissemination readiness factors, as part of a larger project on an evidence‐based program delivery model called PROSPER. In addition to assessing systems’ readiness factors, differences among US regions and comparative levels of readiness between state systems were evaluated. The Extension web‐based survey sample N was 958 and the DOE–DPH telephone survey N was 338, with response rates of 23 and 79 %, respectively. Extension survey results suggested only a moderate level of overall readiness nationally, with relatively higher perceived need for collaborative efforts and relatively lower perceived resource availability. There were significant regional differences on all factors, generally favoring the Northeast. Results from DOE–DPH surveys showed significantly higher levels for all readiness factors, compared with Extension systems. Overall, the findings present a mixed picture. Although there were clear challenges related to measuring readiness in complex systems, addressing currently limited dissemination resources, and devising strategies for optimizing readiness, all systems showed some readiness‐related strengths.     

Heaven and Health: How Black,Latino, and Korean Christians View the Relationship Between Faith and Health

Religious congregations have increasingly been viewed as potential access points to health care in underserved communities. Such a perspective stems from a robust literature identifying the unique civic role that churches potentially play in African American and Latino communities. Yet, research on congregational health promotion has often not considered how congregants view the connections between religious faith, physical health, and the church community. In order to further interrogate how congregants view the church’s role in health promotion, we compare views on the relationship between faith and health for two groups that are overrepresented in American Christianity and underrepresented in medical careers (African Americans and Latinos) with a group that is similarly religious but comparatively well-represented in medical professions (Korean Americans). Drawing on data from focus groups with 19 pastors representing 18 different congregations and 28 interviews with church members, we find that churches across all three groups promote initiatives to care for the physical health of their members. Nonetheless, notable differences exist in how each group frames the interface between religious faith and physical health. African Americans and Latinos highlighted the role of faith in providing physical healing while Korean Americans saw the support of the religious community as the main benefit of their faith. Distrust of medicine was primarily articulated by members of African American churches. The results offer important implications for the future potential and nature of health initiatives in racial minority communities.     

Effective recruitment of parents into family-focused prevention research: A comparison of two strategies

Abstract

Recent literature highlights the need for more effective recruitment and retention strategies in prevention research. This article reports an investigation of the effectiveness of two recruitment strategies for a family-focused substance abuse prevention study. The first strategy offered prospective participants two points at which they could make a decision about their level of involvement in the research project and required only a limited initial time commitment. The second strategy required an initial commitment to participate in all phases of the project. The investigation was conducted with 208 rural families participating in the pilot phase of a five-year prevention study. There were three primary findings. First, both strategies were effective, yielding higher recruitment rates than would be predicted from relevant literature. Second, the strategy requiring a limited time commitment showed significantly higher rates of recruitment into the pretest, but was associated with significantly lower posttest retention rates. Third, data trends emerged but there were no statistically significant differences between the two recruitment strategy groups across a range of intervention participation indicators.     

DESCARTES AND THE DESTRUCTION OF THE ETERNAL TRUTHS

Descartes's view that the eternal truths of mathematics and logic have been established by God and depend on his will does not merely commit him (as some commentators have suggested) to denying that such truths are necessarily necessary; it abolishes their necessity altogether. For similar reasons, some contemporary views also unwittingly abolish necessity.     

Protective factors and young adolescent tendency to abstain from alcohol use: A model using two waves of intervention study data

Two waves of data from a family-focused preventive intervention project were used to test a model of the influence of protective factors on young adolescents’ tendency toward alcohol abstinence. Prior theoretical and empirical work guided the specification of hypothesized effects of the protective factors affectional relationship with parents, affiliation with prosocial peers, and mastery-esteem on tendency toward alcohol abstinence. The tested model controlled for preintervention measures and included specified interrelations of protective factors across time. Structural equation analysis indicated that the model fit the data. Two of the hypothesized cross-time effects, however, were not supported. Work on this paper was supported by research grant DA 070 29-01A1 from the National Institute on Drug Abuse and by grant MH 49217-01A1 from the National Institute of Mental Health. The authors gratefully acknowledge analytic assistance from Chungyeol Shin, evaluative comments from Rick Kosterman, and editorial assistance from Melissa Reyes.     

Probability and certainty: A reexamination of the Lewis-Reichenbach debate

Conclusion I have shown as promised that Reichenbach did not refute either thesis (I) or thesis (II). I have also shown that an argument of Lewis's may be used to establish a weakened version of (I) that has two interesting consequences: if we are to assign probabilities with any justification at all, we must have either certainties or intrinsic probabilities; and if we are frequentists, we must have certainties.