Assessing the Impact of the Grand Challenges: A Progress Report from Ensure Healthy Development for All Youth By Unleashing the Power of Prevention

Behavioral health problems in childhood and adolescence take a heavy individual, social, and economic toll on millions of lives. These problems range widely—from anxiety and depression to alcohol, tobacco, and drug abuse; delinquent and violent behavior; dropping out of school; and risky sexual activity and unwanted pregnancies. For decades, the approach to behavioral health problems was to treat them only after they were identified – at a high and ongoing cost to young people, families, and communities. Strong evidence from the past three decades indicates that we can prevent many behavioral health problems before they emerge. In this roundtable session, members of the Coalition for the Promotion of Behavioral Health report progress in meeting the goals of Unleashing the Power of Prevention, an action plan aimed at increasing the use of tested and effective preventive interventions for young people from birth to age 24. The Coalition, an interdisciplinary group of researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, was created to develop and implement strategies aimed at implementing effective preventive interventions for a range of behavioral health problems. Unleashing the Power of Prevention is a central component of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare's Grand Challenge of Ensure Healthy Development for all Youth. A panel composed of members of the Ensure Healthy Youth Development Grand Challenge and authors of the Unleashing the Power of Prevention report will discuss progress in achieving the aims of Unleashing the Power of Prevention in three areas: 1) increasing community and state infrastructure for delivering preventive interventions for behavioral health problems in children and youth; 2) scaling up tested and effective family-focused preventive interventions to promote children's behavioral health problems; and 3) preparing the workforce to deliver tested and effective preventive interventions for children and youth. Presenters will convey evidence of progress in each of these strategic initiatives. This evidence includes examples of state infrastructure supports that promote preventive interventions, efforts undertaken by members of the Coalition for the Promotion of Behavioral Health to scale up healthy parenting interventions through involvement in the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine's Collaborative on Healthy Parenting Collaborative in Primary Care, and progress in advancing workforce efforts in social work education that enhance training in prevention practice and policy. Brief presentations by members of the Coalition for the Promotion of Behavioral Health will be followed by input and discussion with session attendees. The Grand Challenges initiative affords a unique opportunity to reduce individual and social problems and to increase the impact of social work research, policy, and practice. It is imperative that each grand challenge find the appropriate means to evaluate the impact of its efforts to meet stated goals. This session illustrates how grand challenge goals can be measured and evaluated by illustrating progress in the Unleashing the Power of Prevention component of the Grand Challenge of Ensure Healthy Development for all Youth.