Article

Translational research in action: implementation of the communities that care prevention system in 12 communities†‡

  1. Abigail A. Fagan1,*,
  2. Koren Hanson2,
  3. J. David Hawkins2,
  4. Michael W. Arthur2

Article first published online: 21 AUG 2009

DOI: 10.1002/jcop.20332

Issue

Journal of Community Psychology

Journal of Community Psychology

Volume 37, Issue 7, pages 809–829, September 2009

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How to Cite

Fagan, A. A., Hanson, K., Hawkins, J. D. and Arthur, M. W. (2009), Translational research in action: implementation of the communities that care prevention system in 12 communities. Journal of Community Psychology, 37: 809–829. doi: 10.1002/jcop.20332

Author Information

  1. 1

    University of South Carolina

  2. 2

    University of Washington School of Social Work

*Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 29208

  1. †

    This work was supported by a research grant from the National Institute on Drug Abuse (R01 DA015183-01A1) with co-funding from the National Cancer Institute, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention. Findings from this paper have been presented at the 2008 Society for Prevention Research conference in San Francisco, CA. The authors wish to acknowledge the contributions of the communities participating in the Community Youth Development Study.

  2. ‡

    The content of this paper is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the funding agencies.

Publication History

  1. Issue published online: 21 AUG 2009
  2. Article first published online: 21 AUG 2009

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Abstract

Translational research (Pentz, Jasuja, Rohrbach, Sussman, & Bardo, 2006; Woolf, 2008) is concerned with moving advances in prevention science into everyday practice in communities, yet there are few models for ensuring this transfer of knowledge. Communities That Care (CTC) provides a planned, structured, and data-driven system that trains community prevention coalitions to select evidence-based programs and replicate them with strong implementation fidelity. In this article, the authors describe the implementation of the CTC prevention system over a 5-year period in 12 communities participating in the Community Youth Development Study.

The results indicated that the intervention communities enacted, on average, 90% of the core components of the CTC system, and achieved high rates of implementation fidelity when replicating a variety of school, afterschool, and parent training programs. These results held over time; communities successfully launched their prevention coalitions and programs and maintained the quality of their prevention services over 5 years. These results indicate that the CTC system can be used to foster translational research. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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