Drs. Wandersman and Imm share their thoughts on the US military and prevention...

Prevention. We (mostly) all agree that it is important. Still doing prevention is hard. And when you are trying to implement prevention programming for complex, multi-factorial problems - like sexual assault and harassment - it can be really hard.
​

CLICK HERE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT THE SAPRO PROJECT

At the Wandersman Center, we care a lot about prevention. But not just any prevention - we care about high quality prevention that works. This is why we are working with the Department of Defense to help improve sexual assault/sexual harassment prevention programming across military service branches and military academies. This work was recently highlighted by the American Evaluation Association.

Check it out here. What's the biggest lesson learned? The military is unique in many ways. But the problems we face are things we face in other settings too. We can adapt what we know to the military context and find success. Time is needed to do this though. We cannot build a prevention system without time and resources. This is partly why we have come to realize how important readiness really is. Its not enough to understand a problem and want to intervene. We have to help people - military or civilian - establish the context for high quality implementation.
​
This is what readiness provides.