Session: Abstract of Distinction: Examining Codesign As a Strategy to Advance Rapid and Sustainable Implementation in Prevention Systems (Society for Prevention Research 27th Annual Meeting)

SESSION INTRODUCTION: The use of research-informed prevention programs and policies remains low despite significant gains in knowledge about what works. There is a critical need for strategies that effectively encourage the rapid and sustainable uptake of effective approaches. Codesign or coproduction is a variant of participatory research and user-design in which accumulated knowledge is brought to co-designers in public and private industries. The role of the researcher in these partnerships is to present syntheses of research and content area expertise to guide collaborator development and rapid deployment. As a methodology, the process of codesign is not yet well-studied, being typically conceptualized as a front end process for developing final technologies rather than its own “technology” for speeding research translation and use. The papers in this panel will present examples of codesign strategies nationally and internationally to examine how this approach is currently being conceptualized and discuss opportunities for building a research agenda to advance this approach to implementation.

The first paper, “Creating an Evidence-Based, System-Wide Supervision Model” presents the R3 supervision-targeted implementation approach. Development of the R3 model was precipitated by a system-identified need which was then addressed through a collaborative and iterative design process. The paper will present results from an 18 county implementation study in New York and Tennessee in which modifications in each site supported continued, and successful, implementation.

The second paper, “CoDesign issues with Marginalized Communities: Integrating Flexibility with Social Justice Principles” presents the benefits of codesign through case studies of three research projects involving immigrant Latino/a families and families in Chihuahua, Mexico, respectively. These studies highlight the value of codesign for improved program efficacy, program retention and greater responsivity to social justice principles compared to traditional implementation approaches.

The third paper, “Evaluating the Value of CoDesign to Accelerate Research Use in Nontraditional Settings,” examines the potential value of this method for implementing prevention approaches within juvenile court operations. The paper presents two case studies of codesign to develop a court based family peer support program and a probation model designed around principles of adolescent development. In both projects, the codesign process engaged deep buy in that could be relied on to sustain programs with limited ongoing researcher support.

The discussant will summarize key themes from the papers and discuss how these findings line up with the Cultural Exchange framework for facilitating cross disciplinary collaborations. We anticipate that the focus on implementation sustainability, responsivity to different contexts and knowledge translation will be of interest to the SPR audience.