Session: Planned Adaptation of the Family Bereavement for Wide-Scale Implementation By Community-Based Agencies (Society for Prevention Research 26th Annual Meeting)

Goal of this symposium is to present research conducted at the pre-adoption phase of the Translational Science to population impact framework (Spoth et al., 2013) to prepare the Family Bereavement Program to be translated from an experimental prototype evaluated in a randomized efficacy trial into a widely disseminated and sustainable community service.

The first paper will describe the research on the efficacy of the FBP to improve outcomes for children and parents up to 15 years following program participation. The presentation will also describe two prior studies that inform the current strategy of translational research, a national survey of services provided by child bereavement agencies and a pilot test of implementation of the FBP in two community-based child bereavement agencies. Finally, the presentation will provide an overview of the current approach which involves an adaptation of the FBP to preserve the core program components while redesigning the delivery system to meet the needs of three levels of consumers; bereaved parents, group leaders and community agencies.

The second paper will describe the use of methods from applied anthropology to study the the multiple contexts within which the program will be implemented, including the perspectives of participants, group leaders and agencies. The methods included site visits to four diverse collaborating agencies which allowed for the identification of salient characteristics of these sites that needed to be considered in the collaborative process of program adaptation. The presentation will identify agreement on core issues between agencies and the program developers which allowed for engagement on the collaborative process of adapting the program using user centered design principles to fit the needs of parents, providers and agency leaders and prepare the program for a pilot test and increase the likelihood of broad dissemination.

The third paper will describe the process of adapting the Family Bereavement Program into a user-friendly, sustainable program. The structural parameters of the agencies that determined key redesign issues, the nature of the agencies’ staff and length of their child-focused programs, will be described. Then, the collaborative, user-centered approach we are using to adapt the program will be discussed. To illustrate the adapted program materials, revised prototypes of materials for the first two program modules will be presented.

At the conclusion of the presentations, the discussant will make some summary statements and moderate the discussion between the attendees and the presenters.