The Process of Engaging with a Community Partner to Integrate Evidence-Based Practices in a Juvenile Diversion Program

Introduction: Community-based participatory research (CBPR) is an established method in implementation and dissemination science though it principles are often underutilized in community-research partnerships in prevention. The goal of this poster is to reflect on the process of engaging with a community partner (CP) to develop and assess an evidence-based intervention for the CP’s juvenile diversion program. The following parameters were requested by the partner and incorporated into the intervention design: single-session, psychoeducational, group-based, and engaging both the adolescent and at least one parent.

Methods: Through an iterative process, the research team and the CP worked together to first come to the agreement to utilize Motivational Interviewing (MI) as a flexible yet evidence-based approach to brief preventive interventions, and then to determine how the MI spirit and techniques integrated into the framework of the current juvenile diversion program. As a component of the iterative process, we completed a review of the literature regarding MI, brief interventions, parent-adolescent interventions, and group-based interventions, and the results are discussed herein. Interviews of both research team members and community team members were conducted to enhance our understanding of the communication process from multiple perspectives.

Results: We will discuss both the iterative process of CPBR and intervention development, and considerations for effective and engaged communication in CBPR. We will synthesize the perspectives of the research team members and the community members to discuss what went well and what can be learned from the development of this intervention. An important component of conducting successful CBPR is a strong research-community team with effective communication. An example of this is clear communication between the research and community team members in their discussions of both practice-based constraints and necessary parameters to ensure strong evidence-based programming. Without this approach to cooperative partnership, prevention scientists will be unlikely to create sustainable, impactful community interventions that have real world usefulness.

Conclusions: Academic-community partnerships are a feasible and effective avenue for crafting interventions that are evidence-based and sustainable for the community in which they are implemented. We reflect on steps and processes other researchers or community organizations may take in order to streamline their partnerships.