Prevention programs that routinely improve children’s developmental outcomes in a research setting too often falter and fail to fulfill their promise when they are implemented in the community.

Among the growing number of academics rising to the challenge of helping good science make the vital leap into practice is Michael Bloomquist at the University of Minnesota. He reports on lessons learned from taking the Early Risers prevention program to scale in his home state in the Journal of Primary Prevention.

Applying the fruits of scientific experiment in everyday life is known as “Type 2 translation”. It represents a developing expertise among prevention scientists, but the coded language of the name is an indication of the length of the road to coherence still to be traveled.

The factors may be financial, political, logistical, psychological or take on other forms. And, as the Minnesota study confirms, many of them boil down to questions of good communication and personnel management.

Also known as “skills for success”, Early Risers is designed for young schoolchildren at serious risk of developing behavioral and conduct problems. So called “early starters” are targeted to take part in activities to improve their self-regulation and ability to form more positive peer relationships. Their parents also get training in how to support and nurture their children.

There is already compelling empirical evidence of the program’s positive effect on children’s outcomes. The focus of Bloomquist’s study was what happens when responsibility for implementing the program is transferred from the developers into the hands of a local community agency – in this case the county service system in Minneapolis.

The skills transfer was evaluated over two years during which time 168 children participated. The process was considered to be successful with respect to the level of exposure, the number of participants and the procurement of ongoing funding by the local community system.

As to the reasons, the Minnesota team say county administrators were swayed towards investment by the argument that early intervention was likely reduce long-term financial costs.

Program fidelity was was rather less convincingly accounted for, however.

Building on evidence that trained “para-professionals” can deliver programs to the same quality as research staff, the university trained up a corps of family advocates. After initial training and some technical assistance, they rolled out the program under the supervision of the local authorities.

They successfully delivered the right amount of programming to the right amount of participants with probably the right amount of impact on outcomes.

Outcome data was limited, however. By relinquishing control of the program, the researchers acknowledge that measures for monitoring fidelity and outcomes were overlooked. It would be better, they suggest, if researchers routinely stayed in touch with community organizations in order to give credence to better measurement – as long as the implementation process remained independent.

Staff turnover was also found to be a problem. Over the two years of independent implementation there was an almost complete change, largely due to non-competitive salaries and the stressful nature of the work.

Rapid training procedures and continuous supervision could overcome such setbacks, but community organizations had be ready for them when taking on implementation projects of this kind, the researchers say.

Bloomquist and his colleagues conclude that the study proved that “when a community agency, county funding entity, and University-based team of prevention specialists collaborate, an evidence-based prevention program can be effectively delivered and sustained”.

• Summary of Bloomquist M, August G, Horowitz J, Lee S, Jensen C (2008) “Moving the Science to Service: Transposing and sustaining the Early Risers prevention program in a community service system”, Journal of Primary Prevention, 29, 307-321.