Birmingham, England’s second city has put itself firmly in the vanguard of UK local authorities this week by approving a multi-million dollar investment in a portfolio of prevention programs.

Incredible Years creator Carolyn Webster-Stratton's spin-off Dinosaur classroom management program gets encouraging results from a randomized controlled trial in the disadvantaged neighborhoods of Seattle, Washington.

The three-word core of a general crime theory – poor self-control – developed and expounded in the US by Michael Gottfredson and Travis Hirschi seems to carry weight on “all six humanly habitable continents” according to newer research among the world’s students.

Small comfort, but the severity of the need and the scarcity of resources to support children in the Global South create a valuable opportunity for straightforward experiment. Services taken for granted in the North that have become entangled in the structures and politics of everyday life can be tested at a more radical level in the South.

Trials in Tanzania, where young people are being encouraged to become agents of social change in their neighborhoods, are improving the evidence in favor of collective efficacy as a public health strategy – as well as giving adolescents everywhere a better name.

“Forget those ‘best practice’ blueprints and planning models and frameworks - we should allow people near to the problems the time, space and resources to innovate, learn and manage change effectively…”

Western understanding of the universal principles of children’s health and development has much to offer the emerging economies of the Global South, but it’s a two-way stretch: how countries like China, India or Tanzania deal with the problems they inherit from the developed world has much to teach Western prevention science.

“We don’t grow into creativity, we grow out of it - or rather we get educated out of it…” Education consultant Sir Ken Robinson’s dissection of academics and of the stifling school system he believes they have inflicted on the world has gone to the top of the podcast charts.

A new f-word among children’s services professionals or a principle of effective prevention science? An evaluation of the translation to UK practice of the US Nurse Family Partnership is shedding light on the value and meaning of fidelity.

As US-designed parenting programs begin to be implemented more widely in the UK and elsewhere across continental Europe on the sound basis that they have already been through rigorous trials on the far side of the Atlantic, so the accumulation of evidence that good parenting is good parenting the world over is being relied upon more heavily. But is it true?

Findings from Australia suggest that Triple P, already proven as a targeted parenting program, has the potential to become one of the few yet to pass muster as a robust public health measure. There’s also a reminder of the subliminal value of any well-designed government health campaign.

The superior benefits of focusing on “processes” (what happens inside a school or family) rather than “structures” (the basic traits of a school or family) seem to be confirmed by a University of Texas study of parental involvement in Los Angeles schools.

Successful evaluation in the US suggests that programs that encourage young people to match their adolescent behavior to their aspirations – and to make promises of obedience – may have a place among initiatives to reduce UK teenage pregnancy and abortion rates.

Changing young people’s attitudes to drugs, body shape or sex in order to modify their behavior might seem the commonsense furrow for program designers to plough, but evidence from cognitive science suggests that changing behavior first (and letting attitudes follow suit) might sometimes be the more productive avenue.

Belated evaluation of the benefits of US Child Advocacy Centers, which were hurriedly set up during the 1990s to make sexual abuse investigations child friendlier and increase the number of successful prosecutions, has produced disappointingly mixed results. But one of the implications is all too clear: no matter how worthy the impulse, policy makers must test any intervention before they rush in.

Stripped of its dependence on video technology and other resources to be found in most US and UK schools, the Incredible Years prevention program has shown that with expert modification it can still be effective even in difficult social conditions.

New York research has offset the discouraging findings of an earlier systematic review by suggesting that home visiting programs may reduce the risk of child maltreatment on the part of certain subgroups of vulnerable mothers.

Strong partnerships, careful decisions rooted in good science – and several timely injections of serendipity – have combined to build on the shell of a dejected young US probation officer one of the widest-ranging and energetic contributions to the emerging science of prevention.

Brighter Futures conference keynote speaker Steve Aos describes how the lateral thinking of cost-benefit analysis can turn the stark reality of the argument – that money talks loudest the world over – into adventurous, effective prevention strategies.

"Like any good investment adviser, half of my job is to be a good scientist and half is to help people make sense of the results…” Steve Aos explains the similarities between intelligent service design, a well-balanced investment portfolio and a cleverly-conceived spread-betting system.