Evidence-Based Practices

The last decade has witnessed a dramatic change in the landscape of treatment and prevention programs for adolescents and their families. There is now a wide range of treatment and prevention program choices for service providers and communities hoping to impact at-risk youth positively. Of the prevention and treatment program options currently available, there are a growing number rooted in both clinical trial and community-based outcome research. Other programs also have strong process research that identifies the critical and central mechanism(s) of change that result in successful outcomes. These outcomes have been identified not just by model developers, but as a result of a number of systematic efforts to scrutinize carefully the scientific evidence to ensure that programs work, the outcomes last, and that these outcomes are replicable in local communities (Elliott, 1998; U.S. Public Health Service, 2001, etc). Over the last five years, many evidence-based programs have been successfully implemented in local communities and some across entire statewide systems of care with impressive results (Barnoski, 2004).