A Grand Challenges Progress Report: Assessing the Impact of Ensure Healthy Development for All Youth

Behavioral health problems in childhood and adolescence take a significant individual, social, and economic toll on millions of young people. 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. In this roundtable session, members of the Coalition for the Promotion of Behavioral Health report progress in meeting the goals of Ensure Healthy Development for all Youth, one of the 12 Grand Challenges identified by the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare. The Coalition, an interdisciplinary group of researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, provides the organizational structure for activities being conducted in the Ensure Healthy Development for all Youth Grand Challenge. Coalition members will discuss progress in implementing 7 action steps and meeting goals identified in the group's guiding framework, Unleashing the Power of Prevention. Progress and impact of the Coalition's work will include 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.