Evidence Based Adaptation Tools January 22, 2007
Posted by rickbarth in Uncategorized.add a comment
In what sometimes seems like another life, I developed a program called Reducing The Risk (RTR) in the early 1980s, which turned out to be an effective curriculum for reducing the rates of unprotected sexual intercourse among youth. As a developer of RTR, I’m now working with ETR Associates and the CDC to help them develop adaptation tools, because many users want to use an evidence based curriculum but adapt it to the cultural and developmental context (sound familiar?). I accepted the challenge of working with the ETR/CDC team because I wanted to learn more about methods of adaptation, because everyone wants what Phillip Kendall calls “flexible fidelity”. This ETR/CDC process is intended to systematize the way you go about adapting ESIs to your local circumstances–i.e., to improve transportability. Their work is based on prior work at SAMHSA and CDC’s Division of HIV/AIDS Prevention (DHAP). I’ve attached the description of the adaptation tools, for anyone who is thinking about this process. I very much like what they have done. Kendall says that you need to keep the program’s “strategy” in mind when you adapt it, but is pretty vague about what strategy is. In the attached, they break they start with a very clear logic model for the intervention and then break the strategy down into (1) a description of core content components; (2) a description of core instructional components; and (3) a description of core implementation components. They also have categories of adaptations (green, yellow, red) which are clearly allowable, need consultation, and are clearly not allowable, respectively. I hope you find this as interesting as I did. Altuough RTR is a school-based prevention curriculum, I think it has relevance to other manualized treatments. I’ll keep you posted as this process proceeds. (CDC welcomes the dissemination of this information, so there are no copyright issues.)
