Six-Year Sustainability of Evidence-Based Intervention Implementation Quality by Community-University Partnerships: The PROSPER Study

There is a knowledge gap concerning how well community-based teams fare in implementing evidence-based interventions (EBIs)
over many years, a gap that is important to fill because sustained high quality EBI implementation is essential to public
health impact. The current study addresses this gap by evaluating data from PROSPER, a community-university intervention partnership
model, in the context of a randomized-control trial of 28 communities. Specifically, it examines community teams’ sustainability
of implementation quality on a range of measures, for both family-focused and schoolbased EBIs. Average adherence ratings
approached 90% for family-focused and school-based EBIs, across as many as 6 implementation cohorts. Additional indicators
of implementation quality similarly showed consistently positive results. Correlations of the implementation quality outcomes
with a number of characteristics of community teams and intervention leaders were calculated to explore their potential relevance
to sustained implementation quality. Though several relationships attained statistical significance at particular points in
time, none were stable across cohorts. The role of PROSPER’s continuous, proactive technical assistance in producing the positive
results is discussed.