More than Useless: July 2019 update

The Wandersman Center held a semiannual retreat from July 17th to 19th in Columbia, SC. We were fortunately able to draw upon the insights of nearly 20 psychologists, evaluators, public health practitioners, educational specialists, and non-profit administrators, all of whom have a driving interest using implementation as a way to help organizations and communities reach outcomes. There were t-shirts. The group heard presentations focusing on several key priority areas...

Developing Readiness-Focused Technical Assistance. We heard from Ariel Domlyn and Tara Kenworthy from the University of South Carolina on their work the Centers for Disease Control’s Office on Smoking and Health. They have been working on incorporating an EBSIS-based approach in how project officers could provide support to state-level grantees. Much like “train the trainers,” this project has been focusing on “Providing TA to TA providers.” Together with CDC collaborators, they have been working to identify the active ingredient and value add of readiness-focused TA.

Serve and Connect. Kassy Alia Ray, CEO of Serve and Connect shared her personal story of police-community relations, then dove into how fostering trust and relationships was an essential aspect of building engagement, then readiness for partnerships. She also talked about S&C’s COMPASS model and stressed the importance of having an underlying theory to guide and operationalize the passion behind her work. She also had to leave to retreat to facilitate as water balloon fight with children and police (seriously) in an underserved area as part of the RWJF-supported North Columbia Youth Empowerment Initiative (NCYEI).

Academy x Program-level intersection. Paul Flaspohler of Miami University of Ohio talked about the challenges in evaluating a multi-level support system to support building and sustaining readiness across organizational levels. Drawing on his experiences with schools and schools districts, and our work with the Department of Defense’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Officer, we discussed how to work with readiness and change agents to help mainstream an accountability process.
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Intervention Mapping for Readiness. A large working team of Maria Fernandez and Belinda Hernandez of the University of Texas and Jenny Goetz and Amber Watson from the Wandersman Center discussed how they have been using intervention mapping to deconstruct the change management process. Implementation support is a critical aspect of what we do, although much recent literature has been lacking in specificity. Intervention Mapping has helped us tap into the underlying social psychology of how individuals within systems may approach changing the subcomponents of readiness.

Using Technology to Scale. Finally, me (Jonathan) introduced the still-in-development Readiness-Building Systems internet-based platform. The Wandersman Center plans to scale our tools and readiness-building supports as a way to improve access for more stakeholders. Look for our launch in early 2020! 
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Finally, if you would like to see our Spotify playlist of participant theme songs, follow the link below.
Wandersman Center Retreat