Current Studies

Multisite Implementation Study (2004-2009)

The overarching goal of this study is to disseminate the Early Risers program to 32 sites and examine factors that facilitate or impede the replication of prevention programs under complicated real-world conditions.  To date, Early Risers’ program developers have received over 200 inquiries seeking adoption of Early Risers from state and municipal provider systems across the country. As community demand increases, the challenges of implementing Early Risers with the fidelity required to preserve positive outcomes becomes apparent. Thus, an important question for exportation of the Early Risers program is what factors and/or procedures are required to support the capacity of community provider systems to replicate Early Risers under complicated real-world conditions. With this general question in mind, the primary goals of the Early Risers quality of implementation study are (1) to examine the capacity of community provider systems to implement the Early Risers program with adherence to the program protocol, and (2) to investigate factors that facilitate or impede successful implementation of the program.

Middle School Study (2002-2005)

High Risers is an adaptation of the goals and objectives of the Early Risers "Skills for Success" prevention program. The High Risers Program has been executed as a pilot study for the purpose of examining the efficacy of implementing prevention with children whose risk develops at later stages of development.  The developers hoped this more timely intervention would reduce costs by providing timely preventive services more proximal to the emergence of specific community risks, decreasing expenditures to "desistors" of false positive screens, as well as, capturing participants whose risk status emerged later than our original screening (Kindergarten).  This would also widen the developmental scope of our prevention products.  Middle school children with an increased risk for social isolation and rejection were recruited for an emotional, behavioral, and academic competence enhancement skill-building program.  The premise of the program is that protective competencies can be learned and by so doing risk factors present and future can be mitigated.  In response to a need to develop a comprehensive prevention program for middle school children as had been done for early elementary school aged children, interventions at several system levels were crafted.  Components were organized to relate to the child within their peer system, their family system and within their school and community system.  Components were consistent with programming that was found to be effective for Early Risers including a social skills building component, a family support component and an academic competence enhancement component.  The components were programmatically connected through the work of key prevention specialists embedded in the school and trained and empowered to actively engage the family.

Minneapolis Effectiveness Study (2000-2005)

The purpose of this study was to demonstrate the effectiveness of Early Risers under 'real-world' conditions where the community agency funded the program and agency staff supervised as well as implemented the program. In this phase of program development the impetus for successful program implementation, client participation, and outcome was shifted from the program developers to the community agency. Within the agency, the primary goal was to make the program fit within an organizational culture that embraces community development and self-sufficiency via neighborhood and family support services for families (e.g., food shelves, clothing, childcare, housing services), capacity-building (e.g., job training, education, and technical assistance), economic development (e.g., internet employment searches, family loans, job fairs, emergency funds for job seekers, small business ventures), and arts and culture (theatre and dance studio, classes in ceramics, photography, and cooking) for its low income inner-city residents.