A Decade of Dissemination through University-Community Partnerships: Washington State’s Experience with the Strengthening Families Program

The goal of widespread dissemination of evidence-based programs requires a strong and sustainable structure for implementation.  Given that implementation processes are complex and dynamic, systems must also have the flexibility to evolve and change in order to support long-term public health impacts. This poster will present aspects of a decade-long dissemination of the Strengthening Families Program (SFP) for Parents and Youth 10-14 in the State of Washington. Developed by Iowa State University Extension, SFP 10-14 is recognized by the U.S. Department of Education, the Center for Substance Abuse Prevention and the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention as a best practice program. Longitudinal research (Spoth et al., 2008) consistently documents its effectiveness in both reducing adolescent substance use and improving parenting skills years after SFP participation.  In the State of Washington, Washington State University’s Extension system served as the infrastructure for community needs assessment, facilitator training, program delivery, and local and state partnerships around recruitment, funding and program implementation.  Campus-based researchers and community-based Extension educators collaborated to create a system of integrated research and practice that promoted both program dissemination and scholarship on implementing EBPs in real-world settings.  Through the maintenance of this ongoing collaboration, Extension faculty successfully engaged state and local prevention agencies to share evaluation systems, braid funding, and create coordinated training systems. This poster presents both successes and challenges in sustaining a decade-long dissemination effort.  It will include information on the development of a statewide evaluation system for community implementations of SFP and strategies used for strengthening local evaluation capacity, engaging students in translational research, and providing data for continuous quality improvement of local SFP implementations.  The poster also features the results of a focus group study conducted with Latino and tribal facilitators and families who previously participated in SFP, and includes the challenges in adapting program content and processes to improve the cultural fit for these communities. Finally, the poster will describe the design for a sustainability study of 16 diverse SFP sites in Washington, using Qualitative Comparative Analysis to explore the complex processes and mechanisms in communities, organizations and programs that impact sustainability.