Abraham Wandersman
Biographic Data
| ID | 1739944 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Abraham Wandersman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Abraham |
| FAMILY NAME | Wandersman |
| SIGNATURE | WANDERSMAN A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of South Carolina |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-8952-2184 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 93 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1536 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 92 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1980 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2023 |
| H-INDEX | 21 |
Developing a sustainability readiness strategy for health systems
Examining readiness for implementing practice changes in federally qualified health centers
Implementing evidence‐based interventions remains slow in federally qualified health centers (FQHCs). The purpose of this study is to qualitatively examine the R = MC 2 ( R eadiness = m otivation × innovation specific c apacity × general c apacity) heuristic subcomponents in the context of implementing general and colorectal cancer screening (CRCS)‐related practice changes in FQHCs. We conducted 17 interviews with FQHC employees to examine (1) ex…
Elements for successful implementation of a clinic-based health literacy intervention
Improving health literacy is a national public health priority. Given the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, it is even more critical for health and medical information to be clear and understandable for patients and their families. Clinic-based programs to improve health literacy need to be pragmatic, feasible, and helpful for the implementing clinic and patients. This paper describes the development, implementation, and evaluation of a pragmatic…
Using Implementation Mapping to Build Organizational Readiness
Organizational readiness is essential for high-quality implementation of innovations (programs, policies, practices, or processes). The R = MC 2 heuristic describes three readiness components necessary for implementation—the general functioning of the organization (general capacities), the ability to deliver a particular innovation (innovation-specific capacities), and the motivation to implement the innovation. In this article, we describe how w…
Study protocol
We expect that this study will result in a feasible, effective, and cost-effective strategy for sustaining mental health EBPs that is embedded within a multi-tiered system of support. Results from this study conducted in a large urban school district would likely generalize to other large, urban districts and have an impact on population-level child mental health. Trial registration ClinicalTrials.gov identifier number NCT04869657. Registered May…
Using readiness to understand implementation challenges in school mental health research
Schools and research partners are increasingly implementing complex, multicomponent interventions and school‐wide frameworks to better meet students' social, emotional, behavioral, and academic needs; however, in the research and real‐world contexts, implementation is often fraught with many challenges and barriers to success. This study explores implementation barriers encountered during a randomized controlled trial testing effects of one compl…
R = MC 2 readiness building process
Effective implementation of evidence‐based interventions is a persistent challenge across community settings. Organizational readiness ‐ or, the motivation and collective capacity of an entity to adopt and sustain an innovation ‐ is important to facilitate implementation. Drawing on the R = MC 2 readiness framework, we developed a readiness building process to tailor support for implementation. The process is composed of the following stages: ass…
The community transformation map
Transforming communities to be healthier and more equitable prosents a systemic challenge best addressed by those with native knowledge of the system. Community coalitions are a promising structure for tackling local health inequities, if they approach the change process with multiple local stakeholders and with systemic change in mind. Maturity models offer a framework for system assessment by defining sequential stages toward ideal development.…
Important implementation constructs for federal agencies in health and human service settings that are selecting, monitoring, and supporting grantees
Background: Federal agencies and other funders seeking to maximise their impact aim to understand factors associated with implementing evidence-based interventions (EBIs) to address health problems. Challenges exist, however, in synthesising information from different disciplines and reaching agreement about these factors due to different terminology, frameworks, and measures being used in different fields. Methods: A mixed-methods approach was u…
Formative Evaluation and Complex Health Improvement Initiatives
Sustainable community health improvement often requires the implementation of complex interventions in complex systems. Drawing from the Four Keys to Success frame (theory, implementation, support, and evaluation), this article describes how we used a formative evaluation approach to foster a learning system capable of monitoring and addressing emerging community needs within the Spreading Community Accelerators Through Learning and Evaluation (S…
Community coalition readiness for implementing something new
Organizational readiness for an innovation (a program, policy, or practice new to a setting) is important for successful implementation. The R = MC 2 heuristic focuses on capacity and motivation as a framework for readiness; it comprises 3 components and 18 subcomponents. A Delphi study with community coalition leaders was undertaken to assess when each subcomponent is most significant in the life cycle of implementing an innovation in a coalitio…
Learning From the Opportunities and Challenges of a Philanthropy-Private Sector Partnership
Cross-sector partnerships are essential for addressing such complex social issues as improving population health. Among such partnerships, a philanthropy-private sector partnership is rare in practice; they may seem incompatible due to differences in their missions and cultures. However, these collaborations can yield positive returns for philanthropy organizations and businesses, as well as the broader community. This article draws upon an evalu…
Innovative Methods in Evaluation
Traditional methods of evaluation are limited in their ability to answer key questions often of interest to process evaluators, such as heterogeneity in the ways individuals adopt new programs. In this article, we demonstrate how a statistical approach, Latent Class Analysis, can help improve the quality of process evaluations and illustrate its use in an evaluation of an educational technology integration program in a large school district. In t…
The Readiness for Integrated Care Questionnaire (Ricq)
Integration of behavioral health and primary care services is a promising approach for reducing health disparities. The growing national emphasis on care coordination has mobilized efforts to integrate behavioral health and primary care services across the United States. These efforts align with broader health care system goals of improving health care quality, health equity, utilization efficiency, and patient outcomes. Drawing from our work on …
Evidence-Based Interventions Are Necessary but Not Sufficient for Achieving Outcomes in Each Setting in a Complex World
Many evaluations of programs tend to show few outcomes. One solution to this has been an increasing prominence of the movement that requires programs to implement evidence-based interventions (EBIs). But in a complex world with complex organizations and complex interventions, many challenges have arisen to the implementation of EBIs with fidelity to achieve outcomes at scale. This includes challenges to achieving outcomes in each setting. In this…
Getting to Outcomes
The Labin et al. logic model describes the why, how, what, and potential outcomes of evaluation capacity building (ECB). Getting To Outcomes offers a frame and empirical results for operationalizing the ECB logic model of Labin et al. and for deepening the science and practice of ECB
Moving Forward With the Science and Practice of Evaluation Capacity Building (ECB)
The interest and effort in evaluation capacity building (ECB) continues to grow enormously among organizations, funders, and evaluators. Yet a research synthesis of the ECB literature (Labin, Duffy, Meyers, Wandersman, & Lesesne, 2012) revealed major limitations in the science and practice of ECB. This forum on ECB, which includes two past presidents of the American Evaluation Association, takes a hard look at the progress and challenges of ECB. …
Collaborative, Participatory, and Empowerment Evaluation
Defining, compartmentalizing, and differentiating among stakeholder involvement approaches to evaluation, such as collaborative, participatory, and empowerment evaluation, enhance conceptual clarity. It also informs practice, helping evaluators select the most appropriate approach for the task at hand. This view of science and practice is presented in response to the argument of Cousins, Whitmore, and Shulha (2013) that efforts to differentiate a…
Sustaining Innovations in Community Prevention Systems
This article presents a sustainability strategy, its implementation protocols, and a pilot study of implementation and sustainability readiness. The strategy is guided by a conceptual framework that integrates (a) a strategy for sustaining prevention infrastructure and interventions and (b) a planning and evaluation process known as Getting To Outcomes. Data‐informed decision making is key to this strategy, which includes initial assessment of su…
Exploring the Role of Sense of Community in the Undergraduate Transfer Student Experience
Sense of community may play an important role in the undergraduate transfer student experience by encouraging academic and social success. This cross‐sectional study assessed sense of community in the transfer experiences of 53 students majoring in science, technology, engineering, math (STEM) subjects. Sense of community, participation, and GPA were analyzed using moderated regression analysis, t tests, and cross‐tabulations. Results suggest tha…
A Research Synthesis of the Evaluation Capacity Building Literature
The continuously growing demand for program results has produced an increased need for evaluation capacity building (ECB). The Integrative ECB Model was developed to integrate concepts from existing ECB theory literature and to structure a synthesis of the empirical ECB literature. The study used a broad-based research synthesis method with systematic decision rules and demonstrates the viability of the method for producing a reliable analysis of…
Advances in Bridging Research and Practice
The need for new ways to bridge the gap between research and practice is clear; the use of evidence‐based prevention programs and implementation with fidelity in practice are strikingly limited. The Interactive Systems Framework for Dissemination and Implementation (ISF) was created to help bridge research and practice by specifying the systems and processes required to support dissemination and implementation of evidence‐based programs, processe…
Toward an Evidence‐Based System for Innovation Support for Implementing Innovations with Quality
An individual or organization that sets out to implement an innovation (e.g., a new technology, program, or policy) generally requires support. In the Interactive Systems Framework for Dissemination and Implementation, a Support System should work with Delivery Systems (national, state and/or local entities such as health and human service organizations, community‐based organizations, schools) to enhance their capacity for quality implementation …
The Quality Implementation Framework
Implementation science is growing in importance among funders, researchers, and practitioners as an approach to bridging the gap between science and practice. We addressed three goals to contribute to the understanding of the complex and dynamic nature of implementation. Our first goal was to provide a conceptual overview of the process of implementation by synthesizing information from 25 implementation frameworks. The synthesis extends prior wo…
Using a Training‐of‐Trainers Approach and Proactive Technical Assistance to Bring Evidence Based Programs to Scale
Bringing evidence based programs to scale was a major initial impetus for the development of the Interactive Systems Framework for Dissemination and Implementation (ISF). The ISF demonstrates the importance of the Support System in facilitating the uptake of innovations in the community (the Delivery System). Two strategies that members of the Support System commonly use are training‐of‐trainers (TOT) models and technical assistance (TA). In this…
Sense of community in the urban environment
Participation and the social and physical environment of residential blocks
We propose aframework for understanding the relationship of participation in block associations to a wide range of block-level variables (demograph-ics, the built environment, crime, and the transient social and physical environmenO. Data were obtained from 48 New York City blocks using (a) a telephone survey of residents (n = 1,081), (b) the Block Environmental Inventory (BEI), (c) police records of reported crime, and (d) a survey of block asso…
Bridging the Gap Between Prevention Research and Practice
If we keep on doing what we have been doing, we are going to keep on getting what we have been getting . Concerns about the gap between science and practice are longstanding. There is a need for new approaches to supplement the existing approaches of research to practice models and the evolving community‐centered models for bridging this gap. In this article, we present the Interactive Systems Framework for Dissemination and Implementation (ISF) …
What works in prevention
The high prevalence of drug abuse, delinquency, youth violence, and other youth problems creates a need to identify and disseminate effective prevention strategies. General principles gleaned from effective interventions may help prevention practitioners select, modify, or create more effective programs. Using a review-of-reviews approach across 4 areas (substance abuse, risky sexual behavior, school failure, and juvenile delinquency and violence…
The importance of neighbors
Community interventions and effective prevention
The prevalence of pregnancy, substance abuse, violence, and delinquency among young people is unacceptably high. Interventions for preventing problems in large numbers of youth require more than individual psychological interventions. Successful interventions include the involvement of prevention practitioners and community residents in community-level interventions. The potential of community-level interventions is illustrated by a number of suc…
Benefits, costs, incentive management and participation in voluntary organizations
An introduction to citizen participation, voluntary organizations, and community development
Community Science
A major goal of community science is to improve the quality of life in our communities by improving the quality of the practice of treatment, prevention, health promotion, and education. Community science is an interdisciplinary field, which develops and researches community‐centered models that enable communities to use evidence‐based interventions more effectively and efficiently. In this article, the gap between science and practice and the ne…
Who participates, who does not, and why? An analysis of voluntary neighborhood organizations in the United States and Israel
Citizen participation and emprowerment
Local environmental hazards place millions of citizens at risk of physical, emotional, and financial harm. While the discovery of such hazards can be fundamentally disempowering for individuals and communities, few scholars have examined the dynamics of empowerment in this context. We explore the relationships among forms of empowerment, citizen participation, and local environmental hazards, and offer a model of the processes of empowerment and …
Cognitive social learning and participation in community development
Neighboring in an urban environment
Neighbors are an informal resource who may act individually to provide socioemotional support to each other as well as collectively to ameliorate problems in their residential environment. To explore when neighbors are likely to interact and provide aid and emotional support for each other, 702 residents living in a neighborhood in Nashville, Tennessee, were interviewed during 1978. Factor analysis was used to cluster several variables of individ…
Unpacking Prevention Capacity
Capacity is a complex construct that lacks definitional clarity. Little has been done to define capacity, explicate components of capacity, or explore the development of capacity in prevention. This article represents an attempt to operationalize capacity and distinguish among types and levels of capacity as they relate to dissemination and implementation through the use of a taxonomy of capacity. The development of the taxonomy was informed by t…
Neighboring and its role in block organizations
Developing a Community Science Research Agenda for Building Community Capacity for Effective Preventive Interventions
Research has shown that prevention programming can improve community health when implemented well. There are examples of successful prevention in local communities, however many continue to face significant challenges, demonstrating a gap between science and practice. Common strategies within the United States to address this gap are available (e.g., trainings), but lack outcomes. Building community capacity to implement high quality prevention c…
The Quality Implementation Framework
Implementation science is growing in importance among funders, researchers, and practitioners as an approach to bridging the gap between science and practice. We addressed three goals to contribute to the understanding of the complex and dynamic nature of implementation. Our first goal was to provide a conceptual overview of the process of implementation by synthesizing information from 25 implementation frameworks. The synthesis extends prior wo…
An ecological assessment of community‐based interventions for prevention and health promotion
Presented an ecological assessment of a community coalition to prevent alcohol, tobacco, and other drug abuse, and related risks. Ecological assessment is defined as occurring at multiple social levels and along a continuum of stages of coalition readiness. The assessment is aided by the triangulation, or combining of assessment methods and strategies. Measures used to assess the coalition's formation, implementation of community initiatives, and…
Community and individual difference characteristics as influences on initial participation
Toward an Evidence‐Based System for Innovation Support for Implementing Innovations with Quality
An individual or organization that sets out to implement an innovation (e.g., a new technology, program, or policy) generally requires support. In the Interactive Systems Framework for Dissemination and Implementation, a Support System should work with Delivery Systems (national, state and/or local entities such as health and human service organizations, community‐based organizations, schools) to enhance their capacity for quality implementation …
A Research Synthesis of the Evaluation Capacity Building Literature
The continuously growing demand for program results has produced an increased need for evaluation capacity building (ECB). The Integrative ECB Model was developed to integrate concepts from existing ECB theory literature and to structure a synthesis of the empirical ECB literature. The study used a broad-based research synthesis method with systematic decision rules and demonstrates the viability of the method for producing a reliable analysis of…
The Getting To Outcomes Demonstration and Evaluation
Communities are increasingly being required by state and federal funders to achieve outcomes and be accountable, yet are often not provided the guidance or the tools needed to successfully meet this challenge. To improve the likelihood of achieving positive outcomes, the Getting To Outcomes (GTO) intervention (manual, training, technical assistance) is designed to provide the necessary guidance and tools, tailored to community needs, in order to …
Empowerment Evaluation
Empowerment evaluation continues to crystallize central issues for evaluators and the field of evaluation. A highly attended American Evaluation Association conference panel, titled “Empowerment Evaluation and Traditional Evaluation: 10 Years Later,” provided an opportunity to reflect on the evolution of empowerment evaluation. Several of the presentations were expanded and published in the American Journal of Evaluation. In the spirit of dialogu…
Attribution of Responsibility and Individual and Collective Coping with Environmental Threats
This article summarizes many of the sources of stress that often accompany environmental threats, examines both individual and collective strategies for coping with environmental threats and the efficacy of these strategies, and discusses some of the problems with measuring coping strategies and with gauging their success. It describes collective coping strategies within the framework of social and institutional networks, and it considers why gra…
Collaborative, Participatory, and Empowerment Evaluation
Defining, compartmentalizing, and differentiating among stakeholder involvement approaches to evaluation, such as collaborative, participatory, and empowerment evaluation, enhance conceptual clarity. It also informs practice, helping evaluators select the most appropriate approach for the task at hand. This view of science and practice is presented in response to the argument of Cousins, Whitmore, and Shulha (2013) that efforts to differentiate a…
Community and individual difference characteristics as influences on initial participation
Social support in the transition to parenthood
The study explored the effects of different types of social support on the adjustment of first time parents in the postpartum period. At three months and nine months postpartum, questionnaires were filled out by 18 fathers and 23 mothers who attended parenting groups, and 23 mothers and 24 fathers in a comparison group. Four types of early postpartum social support (parenting group, marital instrumental, marital emotional, and network) were relat…
Neighboring in an urban environment
Neighbors are an informal resource who may act individually to provide socioemotional support to each other as well as collectively to ameliorate problems in their residential environment. To explore when neighbors are likely to interact and provide aid and emotional support for each other, 702 residents living in a neighborhood in Nashville, Tennessee, were interviewed during 1978. Factor analysis was used to cluster several variables of individ…
Returning basic research to the community
Returning basic research to the community
Neighboring and its role in block organizations
Organizational climate correlates of viable urban block organizations
Cognitive social learning and participation in community development
The importance of neighbors
Black Participation in Voluntary Associations
This study explored the potential of a new approach to predicting and understand ing black participation in voluntary community organizations. A set of variables based on Mischel's (1973) "cognitive social learning variables" was compared with a larger set of traditional demographic and personality variables for ability to dis criminate blacks who differed in their level of participation. The "cognitive social learning variables" are person varia…
Sense of community through Brunswik's lens
Although sense of community was heralded by Sarason (1974) as the “overarching value” of community psychology, no theory or definition of the phenomenon has been operationalized or empirically tested. The difficulty in the scientific exploration of sense of community is in the value-laden and phenomenological nature of the experience. Following McMillan and Chavis (this issue), it is theorized that sense of community is represented by four elemen…
Neighborhood and Community Environments
Who participates, who does not, and why? An analysis of voluntary neighborhood organizations in the United States and Israel
Local Action on Behalf of Local Collectives in the U.S. and Israel
While leadership in voluntary organizations is important to the understanding of voluntary action, not enough is known about differences between leaders and members in voluntary organizations. This study explored the differences between leaders and members in local voluntary organizations in the U.S. and Israel. Using discriminant function analysis on demographic characteristics, social psychological variables, and cost-benefit relationships it w…
Neighborhood and Community Environments
How residents cope with living near a hazardous waste landfill
It is hard to be a community or environmental psychologist and not be interested in newspaper stories on global warming, oil spills, or toxic wastes in your own backyard. To the general public, these issues tend to be viewed as environmental, technological, toxicological, or governmental, but not psychological. As psychologists, we see many ways in which psychology does play a role in understanding these events. We have been engaged in a study of…
Fear of cancer and knowledge of cancer
Participation and the social and physical environment of residential blocks
We propose aframework for understanding the relationship of participation in block associations to a wide range of block-level variables (demograph-ics, the built environment, crime, and the transient social and physical environmenO. Data were obtained from 48 New York City blocks using (a) a telephone survey of residents (n = 1,081), (b) the Block Environmental Inventory (BEI), (c) police records of reported crime, and (d) a survey of block asso…
Sense of community in the urban environment
Benefits, costs, incentive management and participation in voluntary organizations
An introduction to citizen participation, voluntary organizations, and community development
Measuring knowledge of cancer
Attribution of Responsibility and Individual and Collective Coping with Environmental Threats
This article summarizes many of the sources of stress that often accompany environmental threats, examines both individual and collective strategies for coping with environmental threats and the efficacy of these strategies, and discusses some of the problems with measuring coping strategies and with gauging their success. It describes collective coping strategies within the framework of social and institutional networks, and it considers why gra…
Living near a hazardous waste facility
Residents near a hazardous waste facility were interviewed about their level of distress and their involvement in a community organization concerned about toxic exposure. Specific beliefs about living near such a facility were related to individual and family distress and to participation in the organization. Implications for research and for clinical practice are discussed
Community coalitions for prevention and health promotion
Frances Dunn Butterfoss, Robert M. Goodman, Abraham Wandersman; Community coalitions for prevention and health promotion, Health Education Research, Volume 8, I
Psychology (69 works) · Community Health and Development (60 works) · Political science (52 works) · Health Policy Implementation Science (51 works) · Computer Science (48 works) · Medicine (46 works) · Sociology (36 works) · Engineering (27 works) · Public relations (27 works) · Nursing (26 works)