The Gross Developmental Potential (GDP2): a new approach for measuring human potential and wellbeing.

Many factors influence the health and well-being of children and the adults they will become. Yet there are significant gaps in how trajectories of healthy development are measured, how the potential for leading a healthy life is evaluated, and how that information can guide upstream policies and investments. The Gross Developmental Potential (GDP2) is proposed as a new capabilities-based framework for assessing threats to thriving and understanding progress in achieving lifelong health and wellbeing.

The Welcome Baby Program: An Implementation and Outcomes Evaluation.

In 2015, First 5 LA contracted with the RAND Corporation to perform an implementation and outcomes evaluation of its Welcome Baby universal home visitation program. RAND designed and executed a mixed-methods implementation and outcomes evaluation program that examined program fidelity across 12 sites in Los Angeles County, each site's community referral and resource process, staff and participant experiences with the program, factors that may influence program attrition, short-term outcomes, and the relationship between program fidelity and outcomes. Data from multiple sources were used, including interviews with staff and focus groups with participants, quantitative data from staff and participant surveys, data collected by staff and entered into an administrative database, and document review.

Sustaining an Evidence-Based Program Over Time: Moderators of Sustainability and the Role of the Getting to Outcomes® Implementation Support Intervention.

Problematic rates of alcohol, e-cigarette, and other drug use among US adolescents highlight the need for effective implementation of evidence-based programs (EBPs), yet schools and community organizations have great difficulty implementing and sustaining EBPs. Although a growing number of studies show that implementation support interventions can improve EBP implementation, the literature on how to improve sustainability through implementation support is limited. This randomized controlled trial advances the literature by testing the effects of one such implementation intervention-Getting To Outcomes (GTO)-on sustainability of CHOICE, an after-school EBP for preventing substance use among middle-school students.

Influence of an Implementation Support Intervention on Barriers and Facilitators to Delivery of a Substance Use Prevention Program.

Implementation support interventions have helped organizations implement programs with quality and obtain intended outcomes. For example, a recent randomized controlled trial called Preparing to Run Effective Programs (PREP) showed that an implementation support intervention called Getting To Outcomes (GTO) improved implementation of an evidence-based substance use prevention program (CHOICE) run in community-based settings. However, more information is needed on how these interventions affect organizational barriers and facilitators of implementation.

Investing Early: Taking Stock of Outcomes and Economic Returns from Early Childhood Programs.

The past two decades have been characterized by a growing body of research from diverse disciplines-child development, psychology, neuroscience, and economics, among others-demonstrating the importance of establishing a strong foundation in the early years of life. The research evidence has served to document the range of early childhood services that can successfully put children and families on the path toward lifelong health and well-being, especially those at greatest risk of poor outcomes. As early childhood interventions have proliferated, researchers have evaluated whether the programs improve children's outcomes and, when they do, whether the improved outcomes generate benefits that can outweigh the program costs.

Home Visiting and Use of Infant Health Care: A Randomized Clinical Trial.

Background And Objectives: Evaluations of home visiting models have shown that they can reduce children's health care use in the first year of life. Models that exclusively use nurses as home visitors may cost more and be infeasible given nursing shortages in some locations. The goal of this study was to test whether a universal home visiting model employing a nurse-parent educator team as home visitors reduces health care use in the first year of life.

Home Visiting Start-Up: Lessons Learned From Program Replication in New Mexico.

Growth in federal, state, and private funding is fueling the initiation of home visiting programs around the country. As communities expand home visiting programs, they need information to help them successfully start up new sites. This paper documents lessons learned about home visiting installation and initial implementation from the replication of the First Born(®) Program in six counties in New Mexico.

Process Evaluation of the New Mexico Maternal, Infant, and Early Childhood Home Visiting Competitive Development Grant.

This article describes the evaluation of the New Mexico Home Visiting Competitive Development Grant, which sought to pilot test the use of implementation supports to improve the development and implementation of home visiting programs. Each community was to use Getting To Outcomes® (GTO) and ECHO® (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes) to support their work. The GTO framework promotes capacity for high-quality programming by specifying ten steps that practitioners should take and by providing support to complete those steps.