Adapting an Empirically Supported Intervention for a New Population and Setting: Findings and Lessons Learned from Proyecto Puentes

Abstract

With an increasing emphasis on evidence-based practice, the need for social work researchers and practitioners to adapt empirically supported interventions for new populations and cultures is essential. However, social work suffers from a lack of guidance and detailed examples of intervention adaptations that may not proceed “by the book” and actually falter but recover. Many of these situations result from lack of attention to setting and context even when researchers believe they have full stakeholder buy-in. This article presents process evaluation findings from an intervention adaptation called Proyecto Puentes that allowed for self-correction and successful intervention development.

Keywords:

• Adaptation
• intervention research
• process evaluation
• intervention development

Notes

This work was supported by a grant from the North Carolina Translational and Clinical Sciences Institute.

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