How Did PEPS Develop the Practitioner's Guide?

CSAP decided to develop its prevention guidelines on the basis of evidence in the field rather than on professional consensus. This approach demanded a greater investment of time and effort, but it was thought that the resulting product would provide more valid and useful tools for prevention planners and practitioners.

CSAP further determined that, for each topic developed as a guideline, three PEPS documents would be essential to support and strengthen prevention systems:

• A comprehensive prevention guideline that describes in full an overview of the substance abuse topic to be evaluated, a review of the prevention approaches used to address the problem, an analysis of the effectiveness of these approaches, a discussion of lessons learned and recommendations, suggestions for program implementation, and suggestions for future research

• A practitioner's guide that distills the guideline into a "user-friendly" summary

• A community guide pamphlet that practitioners may use to illustrate the rationale for their proposed prevention plans and to solicit community involvement and support

The process by which PEPS developed these documents included the following steps:

• Identification and analysis of relevant prevention research studies and practice cases (which constitutes research and practice evidence) to determine the effectiveness of each research study and prevention practice case

• Organization of the research and practice evidence into logical and cohesive groups called prevention approaches, followed by an analysis of the effectiveness of each approach. This synthesis enabled the PEPS expert panel to:
  • Describe the rationale, objectives, and activities of the research and practice evidence grouped within each prevention approach

  • Determine the conclusions that can be reached for each prevention approach and the strength of the evidence for these conclusions. Four levels of evidence (Appendix A) were defined and applied:
    • Strong level of evidence of effectiveness
    • Medium level of evidence of effectiveness
    • Suggestive but insufficient evidence of effectiveness
    • Substantial evidence of ineffectiveness

  • Determine evidence-based lessons learned for each of the approaches

  • Make recommendations for practice and implementation based on prevention research and practice evidence and the expertise of the expert panel members