Making it Work: Strategies for Success

The previous section, Process of Planning for and Selecting Interventions, focuses on selecting interventions to incorporate evidence-based and promising practices into service systems or organizations. Once evidence-based and promising practices are selected, it is time to consider and plan strategies that will support the implementation and broader dissemination of the new evidence-based and promising practices that are being incorporated into the system. Reviews of the research on implementation (Fixsen et al., 2005; Rohrbach et al., 2006) have shown that the evidence base on strategies for effective implementation is far behind the science on developing interventions, but that factors linked with successful implementation have:

  • Strong administrative leadership and support for the innovation
  • Power sharing and participatory decision-making
  • Open and clear communication patterns
  • Stable resources and personnel
  • Shared vision and goals
  • A willingness to initiate change
  • A positive organizational climate

In this Resource Guide we include these empirically identified factors as some of the features of an evidence-based culture. The term, evidence-based culture, was borrowed from the Southern Coast Addictions Technology Transfer Center (Dixon, 2003) which uses the term to describe the multiple factors that are needed to support the implementation of evidence-based practices.  The term is also being used in children’s mental health in Michigan to describe their efforts to advance continuous quality improvement through the active utilization of data. (Wotring & Hodges, 2006).

This section of the Resource Guide provides more information and resources in the following topics:

  • Leadership and Managing Change
  • Strategies for Building an Operational Infrastructure
    • Aiming at transformation
    • Financing
    • Training and technical assistance
    • Using data for continuous quality improvement
  • Strategies for Sustaining Efforts

References

Dixon, G.D. (2003). Evidence-Based practices. Part III. Moving science into service: Steps to implementing evidence-based practices. Tallahassee, FL: Southern Coast Beacon (a publication of the Southern Coast Addictions Technology Transfer Center). [Available online at http://www.scattc.org/pdf_upload/Beacon003.pdf]

Fixsen, D., Naoom, S.F., Blase, K., Friedman, R.M., & Wallace, F. (2005).
Implementation research: A synthesis of the literature. Tampa, FL: University of South Florida, Louis de la Parte Florida Mental Health Institute, The National Implementation Research Network.

Rohrbach, L.A., Grana, R., Sussman, S. & Valente T.W. (2006). Type II translation: Transporting prevention interventions from research to real-world settings. Evaluation and the Health Professions, 29 (3), 302-333.

Wotring, J. & Hodges, K. (2006). Creating the culture to support the implementation of evidence-based practices. Paper presented at the 2006 Training Institutes of the National Technical Assistance Center for Children’s Mental Health at Georgetown University. Orlando, FL.