Applied Podcast
An Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Pound of Cure
Featuring Nate Riggs, Ph.D.
Learn how the Prevention Research Center at CSU partners with schools, organizations, and communities to help promote programs that support mental, emotional, and physical well-being across the human lifespan.
Topics: Community, Education, Health & Well-being
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Beren Goguen (00:00):
Welcome to Applied. This is Beren Goguen. I’m here today with Dr. Nate Riggs, executive director of the Prevention Research Center at Colorado State University. The Prevention Research Center is a campus-wide transdisciplinary initiative committed to studying the development, implementation, and evaluation of effective and sustainable preventative interventions across the human lifespan. Thanks for being here.
Dr. Riggs (00:24):
Thanks, Beren. Happy to be here.
Beren Goguen (00:25):
So your research areas are the science of intervention and prevention, but also risk and resilience and developmental psychopathology. Could you tell us a little bit about that?
Dr. Riggs (00:36):
Yeah, so I started as the executive director of the Prevention Research Center in 2019, and one of the first things that I really wanted to do was to build four divisions within the center. The first one is a healthy schools division, where we work really closely with schools around the state, really around the country to implement evidence-based positive youth development programs, social emotional learning programs, things like that that can prevent risk-taking behaviors in adolescents and later on emerging adulthood. Then we have a second division that is the Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities Division. That division is directed by Dr. Debbie Fiddler. This is a division where we are doing a lot of work with youth that have down syndrome and other intellectual and developmental disabilities. We have a division of healthy aging that’s being directed by Dr. Christine Fruhauf, and that division is doing a lot of work later on in the life cycle where it’s often neglected by prevention science.
(01:33):
And so she’s doing a lot of great work with intergenerational preventive interventions for grandparents who are raising grandchildren. And then we have a fourth division that is the division of Community University partnerships. That division really is the foundation of a lot of what we’re doing at the Prevention Research Center because we’re doing prevention research, this basic prevention research funded by NIH and that kind of stuff. But we’re also doing a lot of work directly engaging with community partners around the state. And almost everything that we do at the Prevention Research Center is community engaged. And I think that’s really important for an academic unit or a research unit in a land grant university that has that mission to engage directly with community partners.
Beren Goguen (02:18):
Absolutely. That’s the impact that is having beyond campus.
Dr. Riggs (02:22):
Yes, absolutely.
Beren Goguen (02:23):
So for our listeners who might not be familiar with the field of prevention science, can you explain at a high level what the field is about?
Dr. Riggs (02:31):
So those of you out there that are listening who haven’t heard of prevention science, you are not alone and probably in the majority, in fact. So prevention science has been a field, an academic field for only about the last 40 to 50 years. Ben Franklin, 250 years ago talked about an ounce of prevention being worth a pound of cure, but as a science, we’re relatively young. And what we do is we take research from Allied Fields, basic research from fields like developmental neuroscience, developmental psychology, public health, epidemiology. We leverage that research and have identified research-proven antecedents or precursors to later behavioral health, mental health, physical health problems or challenges like substance misuse, risky sexual behavior, violence, obesity, things like that. And we target these precursors, these antecedents with preventive interventions, with programs, practices, or policies that target on one hand what we call risk factors. So these risk factors being factors that put somebody at risk for a future behavioral health challenge, like poor self-regulation skills or family challenges, or maybe you live in a community that has norms favorable to substance misuse or something like that. So risk factors. There are also predictors that we’ve identified that protect people from the effects of these risk factors. We call them protective factors, right?
(04:06):
And so we leverage that research. We develop programs, practices, and policies that can mitigate the effect of risk factors and promote protective factors. And so we’ve done a really good job of taking that basic research and translating it into these programs. They can be implemented in schools, they can be implemented in families or other community contexts, and we’ve demonstrated that they can have impacts on these more distal health behavior problems. We’ve also done a pretty good job over the past, I don’t know, maybe the past 20 years in demonstrating that we can take these programs that we’ve shown to be efficacious in randomized controlled trials that have strict control and oversight by the researchers and transplant them into real life communities. And so that these community partners can implement these programs effectively outside of the context of a randomized controlled trial. And that’s really where they have the most potential to have a population impact.
Beren Goguen (05:14):
So you’re taking a very scientific approach to doing all these things?
Dr. Riggs (05:18):
Yeah, it’s a scientific approach to making sure that a program has an evidence base. We want to make sure that communities are implementing programs that we’re reasonably sure that they’re going to have a positive effect when they’re implemented. And so yeah, we want to make sure that the communities are implementing those evidence-based programs, because we know a lot of the time communities aren’t implementing evidence-based programs. They’re implementing programs that don’t really have a lot of empirical support that they’re going to work. And in those cases, they run the risk of not only not working, also being a waste of time and other resources that communities could be placing in other areas.
Beren Goguen (06:04):
Now, are these programs that you develop or are they programs developed elsewhere or kind of a combination?
Dr. Riggs (06:08):
Yeah, mostly developed elsewhere. So there are registries of evidence-based programs, so blueprints for Healthy Youth Development. It’s actually run out of the University of Colorado as a registry of existing evidence-based programs. So what we do at the Prevention Research Center is we work hand in hand with community partners so that they can use their own community specific data to identify those evidence-based programs that are going to be most likely to work in their community’s unique context and culture. So we don’t push out prevention research center programs per se. We partner with communities so that they can select the programs that are going to work best for them,
Beren Goguen (06:52):
Help them find the program that’s the best fit for their needs, essentially.
Dr. Riggs (06:55):
Absolutely. And then once they’ve identified those programs, we can provide support so that they can implement those programs with fidelity kind of as the programs were intended to be implemented. We can work with them on using best practices for adapting those programs. Not if, but when those adaptations need to be made. We can also work with community partners on evaluating prevention programs and then also thinking about how do we sustain these programs so that they don’t just get dropped into communities and then fail and aren’t continued, and again, could be a waste of time and resources.
Beren Goguen (07:42):
Right. I imagine it’s not a quick fix, it’s a long-term kind of commitment to doing something like that to see the return on investment.
Dr. Riggs (07:48):
Yes, absolutely. Especially with prevention, because what we’re doing is we’re working early on in development before these problems even emerge. And so being able to prevent behavioral health challenges from happening later on in life requires that sustained partnerships.
Beren Goguen (08:05):
So who from communities generally reach out and try to work with you?
Dr. Riggs (08:09):
It can be a number of people. So there are a number of different sectors, if you will, that implement prevention. One of the most common sectors that implements prevention programs are schools. So we are oftentimes approached by superintendents or principals who are interested in implementing prevention programs. County behavioral health also is oftentimes a system within which prevention is implemented. And so we will have public health directors reach out to us and say, Hey, can you help us identify a program that’s going to work in our county?
Beren Goguen (08:44):
Now, is this something that they pay for or is this like a pro bono service?
Dr. Riggs (08:49):
Yeah, so it can be a mix. In some cases, the state has to support the implementation of evidence-based prevention programs. So the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment, they have a block grant that they then fund communities to implement prevention programs. And then they also have funded us in the past to work with those community partners. So that’s one example. One of the things that we do is we also search for grants. The USDA has been a partner with us for the past, I guess five years now. And we apply for grants from the USDA and then they fund us to work with communities in this way. And then some of the stuff that we do is pro bono. So we develop research to practice tools. So what we do is we are a prevention translation system in many ways in that we take the research that is oftentimes inaccessible to communities, and we translate that research, the prevention research into ways that communities can grasp and can then take and run with. So we translate that into interpretable formats and tools that can help promote the effective use of prevention programs.
Beren Goguen (10:10):
What are some examples of prevention programs that people may have heard of or may not have heard of but have seen inaction and just not known?
Dr. Riggs (10:19):
Yeah, that’s a good question. That’s almost two questions. What are some examples of prevention programs, and then what are some examples of prevention programs that people have heard of? Part of the issue with prevention is that we’re trying to figure out ways that we can scale up prevention programs so that people have heard about ’em and that people actually participate in prevention programs. If I were to pull your audience and ask them, how many of you have been a part of a prevention program? I would say probably less than 10% of them would say, yeah, I’ve been a part of a prevention program, or at least an evidence-based prevention program. And so this is really a scalability issue. We’re trying to figure out in our field right now, how do we take these programs that we know work, that we know save lives, and we know save money? How do we get them so that they’re scaled up broadly across counties or across the state or across the country so that they can have a population impact?
Beren Goguen (11:28):
So growing up in the eighties and nineties, we had this program known as DARE. And according to some information, I found the Drug Abuse Resistance Education Program, which is what that stands for, was created in the early eighties to educate children about drugs, gangs, violence, and how to avoid those things hopefully. And this, of course, was during the height of the US War on Drugs, which as we know has had mixed results. So the article said essentially at its peak, DARE was active in 75% of American schools cost hundreds of millions. And by the early nineties, several published studies essentially found that it was not effective at all and it wasn’t really having a measurable impact on adolescent drug use. And I think this is probably the most widely known prevention program, I would say at least that’s the one I’ve heard of with my generation. Do you get asked about this a lot?
Dr. Riggs (12:20):
All the time. Yeah. So one of the challenges that we have in prevention practice is scaling up prevention programs that we know work. We have a lot of evidence that prevention programs can work in randomized controlled trials. We have several programs that we know can be implemented in real world conditions and are candidates for scaling up broadly across states, across the country, and even internationally. That isn’t happening right now. And it requires statutory support, it requires funding, it requires a prevention infrastructure and a prevention workforce, all of those things. We are currently trying to work with policymakers to support. And so prevention programs, although they’re evidence-based and work, they’re not widely implemented, generally speaking, with one exception. And that exception for some reason is DARE. It caught lightning in a bottle somehow and was broadly disseminated and scaled up without any evidence that the program would actually prevent substance misuse. And so it was pushed out, it was scaled up, and then we started to figure out, wait a second, this program isn’t really effective. It’s not moving the dial on substance misuse. There were several studies that showed that it was not effective, and there were some studies that actually showed that it was detrimental
(13:57):
That young people who participated in the DARE program actually were more likely to use substances
(14:05):
Than participants who were in the comparison condition. And so an example of a program being scaled up without any evidence, which is really what we at the Prevention Research Center really try to reinforce with communities, is that they’re implementing selecting programs that have the research to support their effectiveness. And so like I said, there aren’t many programs that are currently being scaled up. Probably one that is the closest to being scaled up is something, a program called botvin’s Life Skills Training Program. And that is a program that is implemented in middle schools and high schools. It’s really marketed as a substance use prevention program, and there’s a lot of support that it prevents substance misuse, but really at its core, it is a program that promotes skills. It’s about skill development, it’s about promoting the good in the short term to prevent the bad in the long term.
(15:04):
And so there are some efforts actually in Colorado to test the scalability of that program to go big time, if you will. Yeah, that’s the Botvins Life Skills Program can be implemented in schools. There are other programs that are scalable that are implemented for families. So a program called the Strengthening Families 10 to 14 program is a family focus intervention where cohorts of around eight families, caregivers and youth, they come to strengthening families. There are six sessions of that. And for the first hour, the youth get youth specific skill development content, and then the parents get parenting development content. And then in the second hour they come together and they integrate and they talk about what they learned in the first hour. And both of those programs have a lot of support that they can be effectively implemented out in communities. And so now the next step is to say, how do we get these programs pushed out in the community so people can benefit from them at a population level? And then hopefully you’ll start to get more people that will raise their hand and say, oh, yeah, I’ve participated in that program and it was beneficial and I really got a lot out of it.
Beren Goguen (16:20):
So kind of a grassroots support is needed to push policymakers more for investing in those things.
Dr. Riggs (16:26):
Yeah, absolutely. So we’ve got the supply of evidence-based programs. There are 111, I believe evidence-based programs on the Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development Registry. So we’ve got the supply. What we need is the demand, and part of that is raising public awareness about what prevention is and that it can save lives and that it can do so in a cost effective way where communities get back a financial return for the investment.
Beren Goguen (16:55):
Yeah, I’m personally a big proponent of education. Obviously I work in education, I have children, one of which is an elementary school, and it seems that education faces funding shortfalls a lot, and it’s still somewhat underfunded. So could that be part of the problem is if schools are already struggling to fund just getting books and things like that, that they just can’t reconcile doing a program like this? Or is it that they just don’t have the resources and the knowledge to know that there are grants available out there, there are ways to go and get these things happening?
Dr. Riggs (17:28):
Yeah, I think it’s really all the above. Schools are dealing with a lot right now and a lot of behavioral health needs that their students are dealing with. And really the school system itself, there’s very few, if any systems that really truly care about youth and positive youth development and the health of their students. But it is challenging when there are so many demands on teachers and behavioral health support staff to consider, okay, let’s add this other thing on what we’re already doing. And so what we try to do at the Prevention Research Center is to talk about, Hey, if you implement programs like early social emotional learning programs or substance use prevention programs, not only are those youth going to be less likely to use substances, not only are they going to have more social emotional learning skills, these programs have also been shown to increase academic performance. So young people who participate in early social emotional learning programs score on average 11 percentile points higher academically than young people who don’t participate in early social emotional learning programs.
Beren Goguen (18:47):
Could you describe a little bit about social emotional learning programs for people who aren’t familiar with that?
Dr. Riggs (18:52):
Yeah, so social emotional learning programs are an excellent example of really early prevention and a focus on not necessarily preventing the bad, but promoting the good. And so it’s one of the defining characteristics of prevention is that we’re really about skill development prevention’s, almost a misnomer in the sense that yes, we we’re really interested in preventing long-term distal behavioral health outcomes like substance misuse and depression anxiety and those kinds of things. But we do so by promoting the good, promoting positive youth development by promoting self-regulation, by promoting self-awareness, social awareness, positive decision-making skills and communication skills, all of which are really important for multiple health behavior problems that occurred downstream. So the idea with social emotional learning programs is that if you can promote social emotional learning in early life, you’re going to have long-term distal effects on multiple downstream health behavior outcomes like substance misuse, violence, risky sexual behavior, mental health problems. So it’s really a really cost effective way to prevent multiple problem behaviors in the future.
Beren Goguen (20:15):
That makes a lot of sense. So those are kind of the soft skills. Sometimes we refer to those things, but they’re so important. And if you don’t have a solid foundation in those things like communication, interpersonal communication, how to understand your own emotions and how to deal with those in a way that’s not destructive, those basic skills that some people take for granted, some youth don’t have those or are underdeveloped, and that then makes them more at risk. Is that understanding correct?
Dr. Riggs (20:44):
Absolutely. Yep. Yep. These social emotional skills are protective factors for many different outcomes.
Beren Goguen (20:50):
So how are these programs measured in terms of how effective they are? I’m sure people will have that question.
Dr. Riggs (20:56):
Yeah. This is a question I get a lot from community members. Prevention has a measurement problem in the sense that if we’re doing our job, if we are promoting positive youth development, then nothing happens in the future. So how do you measure that nothing happening. And so one of the ways that we do that is that we measure the impact of these prevention programs on the short term risk and protective factors that we know are going to, if they accumulate, are going to result in problem behavior in the future. So measuring the short term outcomes is important. In addition to that, some teams, if they’re funded long enough, they can measure the impact of let’s say, an early social emotional learning program on long-term substance use. So if you have a research design and you have funding that you can follow young people up long enough to when these behavioral health outcomes are starting to pop up, many of these programs have shown that they can prevent those behaviors from happening. So those are a couple of ways that we can measure the impact of prevention programs.
Beren Goguen (22:12):
Okay. We’ve talked a bit about programs, but you also mentioned policies being as important, maybe even more important. Could you speak a little bit more about that?
Dr. Riggs (22:21):
Yeah. So we have these programs that we can implement in specific context and promote skills and development and things like that. But these systems can also create policies that are preventative. And we know that that has been going back to the tobacco prevention days of the eighties and nineties. We know that creating policies that make it more challenging for people to initiate tobacco use have really strong preventative effect. So those policies have a tendency to be a little bit more challenging to evaluate because they’re not like these self-contained programs per se. They’re a little bit more challenging to demonstrate impact, but we know that the policies are super important.
Beren Goguen (23:12):
So that would even include regulation?
Dr. Riggs (23:13):
Yeah, it would include regulation. So that does, when you’re enforcing a policy, that’s some sort of, that’s a regulatory. Many times they’re regulatory. So if you think about the minimum drinking age, that’s a policy that’s enforced, and that has an effect on alcohol use initiation and progression to dependence. And similarly, in the eighties and nineties, there were several tobacco policies that were enforced that are largely recognized for the reduction in tobacco use that we’ve seen over the past 20 years and the health impact.
Beren Goguen (23:55):
I still remember when you could smoke in restaurants. When I was a kid
Dr. Riggs (23:59):
When I was in high school, we had a smoking section in our high school. Yeah.
Beren Goguen (24:03):
Oh in the high school
Dr. Riggs (24:04):
Yeah, outside. Right. Outside.
Beren Goguen (24:06):
Yeah. A lot of things have changed. Yes. Well, one thing I’m thinking of is kind of the new problem as a lot of parents are aware is the vaping
Dr. Riggs (24:14):
Yeah
Beren Goguen (24:15):
Thing, and that seems to be like the new smoking. I don’t know if you can speak to that specifically, but I know that that’s an issue that schools and communities are grappling with right now and one that can cause really significant harm to youth.
Dr. Riggs (24:30):
Absolutely. So like I said, we’ve seen a lot of gains in terms of tobacco use rates decreasing. So we’ve seen a lot of decreases in the prevalence and frequency of traditional combustible tobacco use among adolescents, and a lot of that can be attributed to prevention. What we’re seeing though is dramatic increases in vaping that are a threat and can undermine the gains that we’ve made in preventing traditional combustible tobacco use. And a lot of it has to do with this misperception that vaping is a healthy alternative to tobacco use. Now, for sure, it is healthier. Healthier, yes, vaping is healthier than consuming all of the carcinogens that come with tobacco. But what we have found is that there are still carcinogens that are consumed when one vapes, and so we need to increase the public awareness around that. Also, there’s something to be said about addicting the teen brain to nicotine. You’re still addicting the teen brain to nicotine. And what we’ve found in some of the research that I’ve done with colleagues at the University of Southern California is that adolescents who initiate nicotine use by vaping are significantly more likely than to transition over to traditional combustible tobacco products
(26:21):
Than young people who don’t initiate nicotine vaping through vaping. So not only is it not healthy, but young people who start using electronic nicotine devices are more likely to cross over into combustible tobacco use.
Beren Goguen (26:40):
Right and then of course, there is the marijuana side of that where it’s not just nicotine.
Dr. Riggs (26:47):
So young people not only can vape nicotine, they can vape a lot of other substances including cannabis.
Beren Goguen (26:54):
And my understanding is that there’s still some lack of regulation with the stuff that they’re putting in to those. And in some cases, people have had severe lung damage because they got a bad batch or something.
Dr. Riggs (27:11):
I think that that just reinforces the fact that we can implement policy changes based on the science that can reduce the likelihood that a young person will start vaping any substance.
Beren Goguen (27:27):
So what are a few key strategies that go into creating a prevention program that works or evaluating and choosing a program?
Dr. Riggs (27:36):
So a few key strategies. So like I said, what we are doing with prevention is that it’s really all about skill development. It’s all about skill building. And the programs that work best aren’t the just say nos, right? That’s not a skill really. They are the programs that promote these intrapersonal individual level strengths and skills, communication, self-regulation, decision-making skills. They promote strong family connections. The family focus interventions are really about promoting strong family communication and rule setting and things like that. They are programs that don’t only promote knowledge acquisition.
(28:25):
So programs that don’t just give youth a bunch of information and then say, here you go, it has to be more than that.
(28:32):
So knowledge acquisition is necessary, but it’s not sufficient. You need to not only instill the knowledge, but also teach the skills. And so those are the programs that are really the ones that are the most effective
Beren Goguen (28:49):
Skills being knowledge that’s applied to your life.
Dr. Riggs (28:52):
Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Yeah. How do I apply this knowledge to the first time someone offers me a gummy at a party? And that takes training and skill development. And these prevention programs are one way that we can teach those skills.
Beren Goguen (29:12):
I imagine another part of this that’s probably important is to make sure youth feel like they have support as well. Not just knowledge or skills, but they feel like someone has their back, that they have the support they need, they have a safe place to go, things like that.
Dr. Riggs (29:27):
Yeah. Trusted adults are huge. The people who are implementing these programs, young people need to be able to trust them. It’s got to be someone who the youth can connect with. And in fact, there’s a lot of work that’s being done on peer supported prevention programs where you have an adult who is implementing the program, but there’s also a peer there that is kind of co-facilitating the prevention program. And that just adds another layer of connectedness and young people who can really resonate with messages that are being sent by other young people
Beren Goguen (30:11):
Their peers,
Dr. Riggs (30:12):
Yeah, their peers. And it’s one thing for it me a mid-career prevention scientist to deliver prevention content right
Beren Goguen (30:21):
Or a teacher or an administrator at a school coming and saying things is not going to be received the same way as a fellow student of someone who understands where they’re at in life.
Dr. Riggs (30:32):
Yeah, I think teachers are great implementers for prevention programs. I mean, young people can connect with their teachers and teachers understand their students. And so teachers can be really effective implementers for prevention programs. It’s also nice to have, if, depending upon the program and how it’s delivered, it can be nice to have a peer that’s up there that those young people can connect with,
Beren Goguen (31:02):
Or possibly even just an older youth as a mentor could work.
Dr. Riggs (31:07):
And really, it’s really important that whoever is implementing these programs are well-trained in how to do so. You have to consider that too. And adults, especially teachers are trained in how to deliver curricula. But yeah, it can help if you have a peer.
Beren Goguen (31:29):
How does human development come into play with prevention? Science? I imagine it’s a big part of the science and the work that you’re doing is you have to understand how the brain develops, how the body develops, how just youth develop in general.
Dr. Riggs (31:42):
Yeah. In fact, developmental sciences is a pillar upon which prevention science has been developed. And one of the reasons for that is that substance use disorder, depression, mental health issues, eating disorders, they are all developmental disorders. A person doesn’t wake up one day and have a substance use disorder. That substance use disorder is a consequence of multiple interactions among multiple preexisting risk and protective factors that happen in periods of development before that substance use disorder actually emerges. And so what we need to know as prevention scientists is when do these risk and protective factors start to be really predictive of later problems? And so just understanding that development is critical. We also need to know when in life peak onset of these developmental disorders occur. And for the majority of them, the onset occurs during either adolescence or emerging adulthood. And so knowing this, we can then say, okay, if we want to prevent the majority of substance use disorders, we need to implement programs or practices or policies earlier on in life. I would argue in childhood.
Beren Goguen (33:10):
So more elementary school and less high school, well, not less, but you can’t just talk to these kids in high school. You need to get that information to them earlier, maybe even before middle school.
Dr. Riggs (33:20):
Yeah, because a lot of times, if you’re waiting until high school, a good portion of those youth have already initiated substance misuse. They may not be dependent upon substances yet, but yeah, intervening early is important.
Beren Goguen (33:45):
Are there a lot of job opportunities for people who study prevention science? Or is that still kind of developing?
Dr. Riggs (33:50):
Yeah, so there are a number of sectors that implement prevention programs, including the educational sector, juvenile justice sector, child welfare, and even the Department of Defense is hiring 2000 prevention specialists in, I think in the next couple of years. And so prevention is a thing, is becoming more and more recognized as a kind of professional opportunity. It’s a real growth industry. So as people around the country become aware of the power of prevention, as state agencies recognize that they need to include prevention as a part of a comprehensive behavioral health approach, more and more job opportunities are opening up either in those state agencies or in the education sector, in the juvenile justice sector, all of these places that are increasingly understanding the power and impact that prevention can have.
Beren Goguen (34:58):
So I recently spoke to Dr. Brad Connor, who is professor and director of addiction counseling at CSU.
Dr. Riggs (35:04):
I know Brad well,
Beren Goguen (35:05):
And we talked about how treatment of addiction has changed a lot just in the last 10 to 15 years. And I imagine there are a lot of parallels between how addiction is viewed and treated and maybe less stigmatized, although certainly not completely unstigmatized, and just there’s better science, better tools, better data, things like that. And I imagine it’s similar in your field as well.
Dr. Riggs (35:29):
Yeah, I think our field has changed in the last 10 years in a few ways. 40, 50 years ago, we were just trying to demonstrate that we can move the dial on these risk and protective factors that we can actually have an impact. We’ve done that. Now we know that prevention can work where a lot of the growth in prevention sciences currently is in ensuring that prevention works for the people who need it the most. So looking at prevention from an equity lens and implementing programs where they’re needed, and that prevention programs are delivered in an equitable way, in a culturally responsive way so that everybody can benefit from them. And so really it’s an issue of generalizability, of prevention programs across several contexts and culture. So that’s one area of growth. We still have room to grow in that area, but that’s a real area of focus.
(36:26):
A second area of focus is in implementation science. So again, going back to this, we’ve done a good job of testing programs in tightly controlled conditions, but what happens when these programs are unleashed into the wild and what are the implementation factors that are important that communities need to think about in terms of implementation, fidelity, dosage, adapting programs and things like that. And so our field, there used to be this tension between implementing programs with strict fidelity. It’s like this program’s been developed by a developer. Don’t monkey with it, implement it exactly as intended. And if you don’t, then you don’t know if the program’s going to work or not, versus, okay, this program is effective generally speaking, but I’ve got a community context that is different from the context that the program was developed in. How do I adapt this program so that it addresses my community’s needs? And there are best practices for that. We now know this dichotomy between fidelity and adaptation. It’s not black or white. And there are best practices that communities can follow that if they need to adapt a program, this is how you do it.
Beren Goguen (37:39):
So certain core aspects are essential to kind of retain, but other things need to be able to be flexible because this is not really a one size fits all.
Dr. Riggs (37:46):
Exactly, exactly. And so we work with communities on saying, okay, here are what we call red light adaptations. You can’t mess with this. This is a core component of the program. Don’t mess with it under any circumstances, but here’s some green light adaptations, some adaptations that you can make. They’re kind of surface level or adaptations that if you change them, if you translate this program into another language, for example, you can be reasonably sure that you’re going to be able to retain the effectiveness of this program because by translating that program, you’re not changing any of the underlying theoretical model that the program is based upon, and that we know it works.
Beren Goguen (38:32):
So if someone listening is a school administrator, a teacher, or just a concerned parent and they want to learn more about prevention programs for their community, what would you tell ’em?
Dr. Riggs (38:42):
I would say that you’re not alone. That there are support systems out there that can help you identify, select, and implement these programs. And the CSU Prevention Research Center is here to help. That is what we do. We are a prevention support system. And if you have any questions about prevention, if your communities or your schools are really interested in implementing programs and learning about how to do them effectively, that’s what we’re here for. We are in an engaged research center. It’s our job to connect with community partners, and we just love to do it. And so feel free to reach out and connect with us.
Beren Goguen (39:26):
The Applied podcast is produced by the Colorado State University Office of Engagement and Extension. You can learn more about CSU Online Master’s in Prevention Science, along with the online graduate certificate in prevention program planning and evaluation on the CSU online website. You can also find helpful information on the CSU Prevention Research Center website, links to all three in the show notes.
