Prevention Talks # 10 - A Systems Approach for Adaptation and Sustainability - Felipe Castro, PhD

During the next Prevention Talk we will be addressing the following question: How do we in the prevention community need to adapt evidence-based interventions to fit different prevention delivery systems and contexts? Prevention scientists have developed many efficacious preventive interventions in a variety of areas.

Despite the demonstrated effectiveness of many evidence-based preventive interventions (EBPIs), two pervasive problems limiting their widespread use are: (a) low rates of adoption, and (b) limited sustainability. Dr. Felipe Gonzalez Castro (College of Nursing and Health Innovation at Arizona State University) and his team conducted the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation sponsored study of the adaptation, adoption, and sustainability of evidence-based drug prevention interventions, middle school principals and teachers from low-income rural communities in areas of high opiate use were interviewed. These educators reported some of the major barriers to adoption which will be highlighted during the talk.

From an ecological (ecosystemic) framework, it is clear that one important factor for improving intervention utilization involves: (a) optimizing the preventive intervention via design adaptations (a micro-level approach) that facilitate its dissemination and implementation (D&I) in diverse local communities. Nonetheless, increasing preventive intervention rates of adoption and their sustainability will require coordinated action on two other factors: (b) local community engagement (a meso-level approach) for greater demands from community residents for these interventions, and (c) advocacy with legislators to enact policies and legislation (a macro-level approach) that encourage and provide financial and political support for the widespread adoption and sustainability of these preventive interventions. A common theme in both of these higher ecological factors involves promoting a culture of prevention.

During this Prevention Talk, Dr. Castro will elaborate on these three factors from this multi-level eco systemic framework, from how activating these multi-level factors will require coordinated actions at all three levels, to creating a synergistic effect that will initiate and sustain these effects and produce significant changes on targeted outcomes, to advance health equity and reduce health disparities.