Let’s say you have a long lunch hour (hey, it’s spring, so why not take, say, 90 minutes?). You could put that time to good use reading an excellent publication on evidence-based practice and what it means for kids. This was published a little over a year ago, but only recently came to my attention. I’m sorry I didn’t see it sooner, because it helps answer a lot of questions about what “evidence-based” really means – whether or not you happen to be interested in children.
It’s the American Psychological Association’s Disseminating Evidence-Based Practice for Children & Adolescents, available here.
The report begins with a wake-up call:
The prevalence of children’s behavioral disorders is well documented, with 10 to 20% of youth (about 15 million children) in the United States meeting diagnostic criteria for a mental health disorder. Many more are at risk for escalating problems with long-term individual, family, community, and societal implications.
It then moves to a nice summary of the varying contexts in which children’s problems arise and the systems for dealing with them. It also uses an inclusive definition of Evidence-Based Practice (EBP). They look at EBP as way of moving tested practices into real-world settings. However, they also emphasize the importance of integrating these approaches with practice expertise. Evidence-based interventions for children and youth are critically important so that practitoners can draw on programs that have “track records” – that is there is longitudinal data for short-term and long-term outcomes, showing that the program reduces problems or symptoms.
The report highlights four “guiding principles” for evidence-based approaches with children and youth:
1. Children and adolescents should receive the best available care based on scientific knowledge and integrated with clinical expertise in the context of patient characteristics, culture, and preferences. Quality care should be provided as consistently as possible with children and their caregivers and families across clinicians and settings.
2. Care systems should demonstrate responsiveness to youth and their families through prevention, early intervention, treatment, and continuity of care.
3. Equal access to effective care should cut across age, gender, sexual orientation, and disability, inclusive of all racial, ethnic, and cultural groups.
4. Effectively implemented EBP requires a contextual base, collaborative foundation, and creative partnership among families, practitioners, and researchers.
All points worth thinking about!
If you don’t have time for the entire report, some interesting sections are: a review of the history of the “evidence-based” concept (for all of us who wonder where this came from all of a sudden), a good discussion of definitions, and a review of what the evidence shows about prevention programs.
Happy reading!
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