Canadian research on identical and fraternal twins confirms the value of preschool programs by tending to rule out any significant genetic influence on children's school readiness.

In a recent blog posting in the London Review of Books, Michael Little from the Social Research Unit at Dartington discusses the role that the private sector plays in improving outcomes for children.

Findings of the previous evaluation studies of the Healthy Families America home visitation program have led to controversy over the program's effectiveness. New evidence from a recent Arizona study sheds some positive light on program effects.

Engaging parents is easier said than done, but Nick Axford explained at the Society for Research Prevention’s annual conference in Washington DC how valuable, practical lessons were learned from mistakes in a program at six children’s centers.

The work of Paul Meier, a medical statistician and advocate of randomized controlled trials, is credited with saving millions of lives. He died last month at the age of 87.

The first reliable data on the costs and benefits of youth justice, early years and education interventions in the UK backs greater investment in selected evidence-based programs.

Big advances in economic modeling methods have made cost-benefit analyses of child welfare interventions more feasible than ever before. Now it’s time for researchers to rise to the challenge of using these tools, a review claims.

Is there a positive side to failure? A new book about the criminal justice system lifts the lid on why some programs fail and argues that past failures are the key to future successes.

On the 16th of April, 2012, the Spanish and UK governments demonstrated a shared commitment to evidence, and better outcomes for children and families using reduced public resources.

Colleagues say she’s having a “major impact on research in social and emotional learning.” Now a US-based nonprofit has presented her with the Joseph E. Zins Award for bringing out the best in SEL interventions. PA asks Celene Domitrovich how she does it.

When Robert Martinson concluded that nothing worked when it came to criminal rehabilitation programs, one result in the US was prisons. The government built lots and lots of prison. Over the past forty years, those prisons have been filled and are now bursting. Public coffers are groaning under the strain and the question is, what now?

An analysis of the economic pay-offs of mental health strategies provides new tools for making tough funding decisions – and finds that programs can return up to £83 in savings for every £1 spent.

Can we broaden the scope of cost-benefit analysis? There are implications for evidence-based programs, practices, policies, and processes. Prevention Action reports from the Society for Prevention Research (SPR) in Washington D.C.

The two keys to school-based substance misuse prevention programs are problem solving skills training and social skills training, a new study finds. And the best outcomes happen when the two “active ingredients” are used together.

Present tough economic times make the greater use of effective programs uncertain but we have much to learn from how those responsible for policy implementation are guided and act.

Preventive interventions take many forms – education, mentoring, alternatives and limiting supply – but a study of gun carrying among young people suggests that these approaches should be complemented by changing the perceptions of young people on the extent of gun possessions and the availability of weapons.

Proven programs at zero net cost; more science, less ideology; standards of evidence for all – if Prevention Action was a political party on the verge of forming the next UK government, this is what it would be promising voters.

For more than three decades the Seattle Social Development Project has transformed our understanding of the pathways to healthy and deviant development, and it continues to make new strides as both participants in the study and state of scientific knowledge develop.

New research shows that Incredible Years can have beneficial effects among children older than those with whom it has worked so far, while using staff who are new to the program.

When parents have a good relationship with each other, their children tend to thrive. Inspired by their own experiences as partners and parents, Berkeley professors Carolyn Pape Cowan and Philip Cowan have spent more than three decades transforming our understanding of family relationships.

Speakers from UNICEF in Swaziland, the World Health Organization and the Center for Disease Control discuss what needs to be done to prevent sexual violence against children on a global scale on the second day of the Society for Prevention Research (SPR) conference.

Evidence-based practice should be about more than professionals consuming pre-packaged guidance. Vashti Berry is impressed by Trisha Greenhalgh’s attempt to empower front-line practitioner.

Prevention and implementation research are often seen as an American discipline, but a recent conference showed that while a huge debt is owed to US scientists there is a growing and active community undertaking similar work across Europe. Prevention Action was at the 2nd Conference of the European Society for Prevention Research in Lisbon, Portugal.

Prevention Action covers the second day of the Society for Prevention Research (SPR) Conference with a feature on the most prevalent cause of premature morbidity and mortality in the world. An estimated 1 billion people are predicted to die of tobacco use in the 21st Century. A global fight back sponsored by the World Health Organization promises to change this, but will it work and how will we know?

Measuring parenting is made difficult by the multiplicity of standards but a new paper shows how a better understanding of the theory of parenting can help.

Taking ideas straight from the laboratory to the community isn’t working, claims US academic Kenneth Dodge, who wants a new way of doing research if it is to make a difference.

A recent study conducted in schools in some of Montreal’s poorest neighbourhoods finds that combining a game aimed at reducing classroom disruption with improved teaching can boost attention and literacy skills in low-income students. But can it help children who are inattentive to start with become better readers?

Resources may be scarce and policy makers might have to make difficult decisions about what to buy. But a more rational strategy that invests early for later benefits would make sometimes nitpicking and frequently complicated comparisons between the value of one "flagship" prevention program and another irrelevant.

A new follow-up study of young people who were formerly looked after in foster care suggests that despite the considerable risks they typically face, many achieve independence with few problems.

As the Society for Prevention Research (SPR) holds an important anniversary conference, Prevention Action finds optimism and ambitions to further its work on an even larger scale.

Here's a new paradox for the implementers of evidence-based programs: most developers of most successful products are striving to make them smaller, faster and more efficient. But year by year the realities of mass distribution tend to make even the best more cumbersome to manage and less versatile.

As researchers rush to make exciting cross-cultural comparisons of child and adolescent mental health using the popular Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ), a Norwegian team sounds a note of caution.

The usefulness and disadvantages of labelling – assigning disagnoses to children – is much debated. So how will the forthcoming fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V) negotiate this contested area?

The shortcomings of economics in understanding child development have been recognised, but we now know how much it can contribute to children’s progress.

LifeSkills Training is massively popular, delivered to millions of students in more than 30 countries as a way to prevent drug use. Government agencies call it a “proven” program. But a starting new analysis of the data claims that reviewers have cherry-picked results. What if LST has no real effect at all?

Severe domestic violence is not very likely to change with treatment. But violence between teenage partners – which tends to be milder and mutual – can be prevented or reduced with early intervention that targets both sexes, a new report claims. And with more than a third of U.S. high schoolers admitting they have been violent to a boyfriend or girlfriend, it’s an urgent issue.

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.

A new edition of a standard manual on diagnosis raises questions about how diagnosis can strengthen prevention science.

BBC radio helps to knit together the case in favor of focusing help for vulnerable children on their needs in infancy by giving prime airtime to the theories of the neuroscientific successors of Piaget and Chomsky.

When teen suicides hit the headlines, the background is often a story of school bullying that has been going on for years. The 25-year history of a major prevention approach shows how a high-profile tragedy transformed approaches to bullying.

Richard Catalano, director of the Social Development Research Group in Seattle, talks about how he came to devote his professional career to understanding and intervening in the pathways to delinquency and drug abuse and what the consequences of this has been.

A new study reveals that the relationship between intelligence, academic performance and early sexual activity “runs in families” - for both cultural and genetic reasons.