Inside Europe’s largest local authority politicians and practitioners are embarking on a strategy that is not only attempting to secure a “brighter future” for all 250,000 children living inside the 100 square mile Birmingham city limits, but – uniquely in the UK – is also designed to make a contribution to prevention science.

Ahead of a visit to the UK next week by US cost-benefit expert Steve Aos and a Prevention Action special focusing on his field of expertise, evidence from Pennsylvania should give policy makers in both countries confidence to invest in prevention programs as a means of making big long-term savings across the spectrum of children’s services.

The return to harder times may be the most obvious reason for policy makers to start calculating how to get the most program value for the smallest outlay, but the implications are farther reaching: the drive towards cost effectiveness is beginning to change thinking about how the benefits of interventions are measured and compared.

Analysis of the work of the Children’s Fund in the UK is giving researchers an opportunity to consider whether a focus on the conceptual framework of social exclusion changes how services describe and seek to help vulnerable children. The answer seems to be “only superficially”.

Researchers in Texas and Australia are feeling their way toward better understanding of why some children learn to talk later than others - and what it is in their make-up that enables the majority to catch up.

In the midst of all the evidence about the need for positive parenting and affirmative teaching it was only going to be a matter of time before research re-examined the superior power and developmental purpose of the darker side of childhood experience.

Insights into the damage depressed new fathers may do to the development of their children are among the latest research findings to prove the enduring value of long-term investigations like the UK’s Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children.

Put two proven programs together in the right combination, one based on work with the family the other designed to help adolescents cope with peer pressure, and you may have the makings of a doubly effective assault on substance misuse, new findings from Iowa suggest.

Classroom research even in the “authoritarian capitalist” context of Singapore has found that successful teaching depends on counterbalancing competition for high grades with an emphasis on the value of learning or its own sake.

A Witchita study finds that the schoolteachers most prone to blaming their students’ difficulties on a lack of motivation are often the same ones whose classes are singled out by their students as being boring.

Analysis of the results of 77 parenting programs by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has produced a short list of ingredients associated with clear improvements in behavior. A focus on discipline barely figures.

A program that has put ex-gang members back on to the streets of Chicago as “violence interrupters” as part of public health-inspired response to gang violence in the city is claiming promising first results.

A UK public health specialist does the once unthinkable: finds similarities between the speeches of Sir Keith Joseph – a pillar of Conservative governments during the Thatcher years in the UK – and Tony Blair in the heyday of New Labour.

Looking at it from birth to old age and back again, researchers from the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand agree that early intervention is the key to effective help.

Government in Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland has partnered with the Atlantic Philanthropies to bring international expertise and proven programs to children's services. The Early Intervention Forum held in Dublin brought together 25 innovative projects from across the island to reflect on past achievements and future challenges.

Armed with a sociological imagination, Zili Sloboda has been a key driving force in prevention science. After co-founding the Society for Prevention Research in 1991 she has taken up tenure as its president. Here she talks to Prevention Action about the history of the society and her goals for the future.

Over the past five years there have been significant advances in our understanding of gene-environment interactions and children's development. But there is still much work to do, the search is on for a more rigorous conceptualization of what the E in G x E stands for and we still haven't figured out what this means for intervention efforts.

The practical problems of adapting programs are illustrated in today's edition of Prevention Action. Our cover story reports on two programs adapted for different contexts on opposite sides of the globe, as presented at last week's SPR meeting in San Francisco.

The value of method was evident at this year's Society Prevention Research meeting. Several symposia and presentations shared important methodological developments and this year’s recipient of the SPR Early Career Award was Stephanie Lanza from the Methodology Center at Penn State University.

In the near 20 years since the formation of the Society for Prevention Research, the field has transformed. Many effective and evidence-based programs are available to treat and prevent a diverse collection of health and developmental problems. Now attention is focused on how to translate these programs into mainstream practice.