The Science, and Art, of Program Dissemination: Strategies, Successes, and Challenges

Book excerpt: Gain a greater awareness of the processes involved in the dissemination of evidence-based interventions, as well as existing supports that help disseminate and sustain them. Many interventions that aim to help children and adolescents are found to be efficacious every year, but program developers are often not equipped with the skills, knowledge, or tools to understand how to scale up a program or sustain it after the initial funding. Consumers (e.g., service providers, who are consumers of interventions), on the other hand, often do not understand all that goes into implementing and scaling up an intervention. This special issue: introduces readers to the problem, discusses some of the challenges with disseminating programs, and presents various supports that exist which can help scale up and sustain interventions. The authors’ goal is to promote the field of dissemination science by encouraging the sharing of successes and challenges. This is the 149th volume in this Jossey-Bass series New Directions for Child and Adolescent Development. Its mission is to provide scientific and scholarly presentations on cutting edge issues and concepts in this subject area. Each volume focuses on a specific new direction or research topic and is edited by experts from that field.