Unifying Prevention and Promotion for Effective Translation of Science to Practice

Over the past 30 years, researchers have documented effective, theory-based programs and practices that improve the health and wellbeing of children. In order to produce measurable improvements in public health, such practices must be institutionalized; however, there exist a number of barriers to translating what we know from science to what we do in practice. In the present paper, we discuss a number of those barriers, including cultural differences between those who espouse a public health, prevention science approach versus those who espouse a strengths-building, health promotion approach; practical difficulties in documenting the evidence base for existing or newly developed programs and practices; and inflexibility of standardized programs and resulting insensitivity to local contexts. We discuss common ground between prevention and promotion perspectives and highlight emerging methods that facilitate adoption of science-based practice into community-based services.Summary of policy and practice implications--Children's services will produce measurable improvements in public health only when science-based prevention practices are institutionalized on a large scale-- One barrier to institutionalization is the false dichotomy between prevention ("deficit"-oriented) and promotion ("strengths"-oriented) approaches.--In fact, the two approaches have more commonalities than differences; discussion of these commonalities may prove helpful in partnerships between researchers and practitioners-- Another barrier is the difficulty in documenting that programs are effective-- High-quality programming is characterized by theory-based planning, monitoring for continuous improvement of quality, and measurement of outcomes. Programming budget and resources should be dedicated to these activities. -- A third barrier is the inflexibility and cost of implementing packaged, evidence-based programs -- Flexible solutions are emerging that facilitate adoption of science-based practices, among them an approach called Evidence-Informed Program Improvement (Small, Cooney, & Connor, 2009) and the incorporation of "kernels" into existing services (Embry & Biglan, 2008)