Prevention Strategies

Case studies of interventions—or techniques to improve communities’ health—describe selected projects led by Prevention Research Centers. The research methods used in testing the interventions, the results, and the status of the dissemination efforts determine to which category the case study is added.

The case studies rely on two main concepts: effectiveness and dissemination.

Interventions are considered effective if the researchers used sound research design and controlled for potential sources of bias, and the effect measures are of statistical and public health significance.

Interventions are considered disseminated if they have been successfully implemented in populations other than the original study population.

Adoptable Interventions (List of adoptable interventions)
The research reported in these case studies has established the effectiveness of an intervention and has demonstrated the feasibility of disseminating it—that is, the intervention has been shown to be effective in populations other than the original study population.

Effective Interventions (List of effective interventions)
The research reported in these case studies has demonstrated the effectiveness of an intervention but has not yet shown it to be adoptable in other settings.

Promising Interventions (List of promising interventions)
These case studies report interventions that show promise in bringing about beneficial change in a population, but the evidence is not strong enough to demonstrate effectiveness. These case studies may describe preliminary data or situations in which replication or a stronger research design is necessary to demonstrate effectiveness.