Closing the door on 2019

​By the time I hit publish on this post, it may already be 2020 where you live.  HAPPY NEW YEAR to our friends and colleagues in Australia, Japan, India, and anywhere east of Riyadh and Istanbul.  For the rest of our US-based team, we still have a few hours to finish up our task lists, our cleaning, and our blog posts before heading out for the night [actually staying in and eating Doritos with 5-year-olds].
 
We here are the Wandersman Center managed to cram a bunch into the final month of the decade. First, we finally put out our Readiness Building Guide. This effort was the culmination of a massive amount of thinking and writing over the past year, informed greatly bu our experiences working on sexual assault prevention in the military with colleagues at the RAND Corporation.  Read all about it and download it at the following link.

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Also, earlier this month several of our team and faculty met up at the annual Dissemination and Implementation Conference in DC.  For those keeping track, I believe this was the 3rd implementation-specific conference this year (after SIRC and GIC), and yet the flavor and atmosphere was different at each.  One thing that we were thrilled to see is that NIH appears to be recognizing the importance of implementation practice in addition to implementation science.  This turn to pragmatism fits well with the overall purpose of the Wandersman Center.  We want to see outcomes with the people and organizations that we work with, so being able to apply the incredible work that researchers across the globe contribute is incredibly gratifying.  
 
Of course, we were double happy to hear R=MC2 shouted out in two different plenaries.  Our friend and implementation-ringer Maria Fernandez talked about a current R01 that she leads, Development and Validation of a Measure of Organizational Readiness (Motivation x Capacity) for Implementation, that aims to take the RDS to the next level of rigor while recognizing the current need for implementation measures.
 
Our faculty member, Michael Marks, wrote a great blog on the use of alternative currencies as a way to address inequity in community-based settings. Read all about it at this link.
 
Finally, I keep track of all the media I consume (except for songs, because that would get bonkers). Here’s a blog recounting the 14 books I read this year: some good, some terrible, some fiction, some not. 
 
Next year will bring a lot of big things (the tour and the online platform), so we’re raring to go.  Peace to you and your loved ones and a happy, healthy 2020.