In recent years, the demand for evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention programs has increased, but practitioners often struggle to replicate and implement them as designed in real-world community settings. The purpose of this article is to describe the barriers and facilitators encountered during pilot year attempts to implement an evidence-based teen pregnancy prevention program within three types of organizations: (1) small community-based organizations; (2) a school-based organization; and (3) a large decentralized city-sponsored summer youth program. We frame our discussion of these experiences within the context of a systemic, multilevel framework for implementation consisting of (1) core implementation components; (2) organizational components; and (3) external factors. This article explores the organizational and external implementation factors we experienced during the implementation process, describes our lessons learned throughout this process, and offers strategies for other practitioners to proactively address these factors from the start of program planning. These findings may provide useful insight for other organizations looking to implement multi-session, group-level interventions with fidelity.
Research on the efficacy of mediated suicide awareness campaigns is limited. The impacts of a state-wide media campaign on call volumes to a national hotline were analyzed to determine if the advertisements have raised awareness of the hotline. We use a quasi-experimental design to compare call volumes from ZIP codes where and when the campaign is active with those where and when the campaign is not active. Multilevel model estimates suggest that the campaign appears to have significantly and substantially increased calls to the hotline. Results from this study add evidence to the growing public health literature that suggests that mediated campaigns can be an effective tool for raising audience awareness.
Although previous evidence has indicated that this particular program can be effective, this study's findings indicate that it was not effective in this setting with this specific population. Results should provide an incentive to learn why the intervention works in some cases and what conditions are necessary for causal impacts.
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