It’s one of the hardest sells in the prevention world—the task of recruiting families to parenting programs. But one intervention is fighting the dismal statistics with a common sense approach. Instead of waiting for the families to come to them, they are going where almost every family is created, and where most have to go multiple times, the local hospital.

Many studies have shown that Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) produces substantial short-term gains. But a new study shows that the good feelings, and outcomes, don’t end there. Wendy Silverman and her colleagues believe that a course of CBT can have children eliminating the negative for years to come.

Being a science dummy is bad for your health. That’s the argument put forth in Ben Goldacre’s book Bad Science. The good news is that Goldacre doesn’t make his medicine hard to swallow. He is engaging and unfailingly acerbic as he reports that the millions people are spending on too many ‘alternative cures’ is almost certainly a waste of money.

As you’d imagine, teaching families how to deal with conflict between parents requires one tricky balancing act after another. So a new book that translates cutting-edge family research into real-world programs – using a mix of evidence and “best guesses” – has much to teach all types of program designers.

There’s a blind spot in the research surrounding evidence-based programs. There just hasn’t been much analysis of how politics and institutional influences can affect a prevention program once it leaves the lab and is put into practice. But one researcher says that the analysis exists, we’re just not looking in the right place.

Prevention Action looks back at a book from the business world, Taiichi Ohno’s Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production. Hidden behind the awesomely bad title are ideas that could revolutionize evidence-based programs and change the lives of the people they serve.

When Len Bickman didn’t get the results anyone was expecting from his evaluation of a children’s mental health system, he could have published and walked away. But he and his team realized there were fundamental skills lacking among providers—the skill to track their own progress—and he came up with a possible solution.

All this week, Prevention Action has been following the visit of Steve Aos and Stephanie Lee to the UK. They brought with them the lessons of their innovative work with the Washington State Institute for Public Policy. Yesterday, Aos delivered the Annual Lecture of the Social Research Unit. His message: system-wide change is possible, but be prepared to fail before you succeed.

Prevention scientists Steve Aos and Stephanie Lee have created a stir with their Washington State program aimed at stopping criminality at its source—before the crime is committed. They are visiting the UK this week to see if their ideas can work in the UK.

A parenting program in trial in Birmingham, UK is trying to find new ways to get children and their parents involved. The problem is that the families who most need the service are the least likely to seek it out on their own.

The problem is well documented. Have a baby, and you lose a little magic from your relationship. But promising new results from a parenting intervention in Australia show that you might be able to love your baby and your spouse at the same time. All you need is a little training.

Today, there is a name for it—Type 2 Translational Research. But the problem of getting a proven prevention to large groups of people has been with us forever. Even after a cure for Tuberculosis was developed, someone had to figure out how to make it work for everyone. As the history of TB shows us, sometimes the simplest solutions are the best.

As the Conference for Prevention Science wraps up, participants looked at some of the ethical questions ahead in genetics. Is there a line that should not be crossed in order to insure a child’s future health? If the government or parents could find out everything that could possibly happen to a child by looking at his genes, should they do it?

In Denver today, participants explored the latest developments in the nature/nuture debate, and what that might mean for prevention.

On day two of the Society for Prevention Research conference, panelists examined methods for extending a program’s reach.

At the Society for Prevention Research Conference, the word for the day is diversity. Prevention programs and research now take place far beyond Europe and North America.