The EPISCenter’s work supporting the scale-up of evidence-based interventions throughout Pennsylvania was recently granted another four years of funding—through 2016. As part of this renewal, the EPISCenter took on an additional role in moving science to practice to support continuous quality improvement in Pennsylvania’s Juvenile Justice System. This effort involves the statewide rollout of the Standardized Program Evaluation Protocol (SPEP; Lipsey 2012), an innovative tool to apply evidence from meta-analysis to strengthen and improve programs and services for juvenile offenders. The SPEP involves collecting detailed descriptive and administrative information from youth programs and services used by county juvenile probation departments, rating those programs and services on their predicted effectiveness at preventing recidivism (based on characteristics of effective programs identified through meta-analysis), and developing program improvement plans to strengthen services. This initiative fills an important gap left by the limited “market penetration” of the small menu of evidence-based programs as traditionally defined, and the practical limitation on the number of interventions that can be evaluated in rigorous randomized trials. We’ll discuss the potential and limitations of this approach, provide an update on the progress of the EPISCenter since its founding in 2008, and share some exciting recent accomplishments in systems change.
- Bumbarger Presentation Jan2013
