Valuing Our Communities: Ethical Considerations for Economic Evaluation of Community-Based Prevention.

Restricted public budgets and increasing efforts to link the impact of community interventions to public savings have increased the use of economic evaluation. While this type of evaluation can be important for program planning, it also raises important ethical issues about how we value the time of local stakeholders who support community interventions. In particular, researchers navigate issues of scientific accuracy, institutional inequality, and research utility in their pursuit of even basic cost estimates. We provide an example of how we confronted these issues when estimating the costs of a large-scale community-based intervention. Principles for valuing community members' time and conducting economic evaluations of community programs are discussed.

Early Social-Emotional Functioning and Public Health: The Relationship Between Kindergarten Social Competence and Future Wellness.

OBJECTIVES: We examined whether kindergarten teachers' ratings of children's prosocial skills, an indicator of noncognitive ability at school entry, predict key adolescent and adult outcomes. Our goal was to determine unique associations over and above other important child, family, and contextual characteristics. METHODS: Data came from the Fast Track study of low-socioeconomic status neighborhoods in 3 cities and 1 rural setting. We assessed associations between measured outcomes in kindergarten and outcomes 13 to 19 years later (1991-2000). Models included numerous control variables representing characteristics of the child, family, and context, enabling us to explore the unique contributions among predictors. RESULTS: We found statistically significant associations between measured social-emotional skills in kindergarten and key young adult outcomes across multiple domains of education, employment, criminal activity, substance use, and mental health. CONCLUSIONS: A kindergarten measure of social-emotional skills may be useful for assessing whether children are at risk for deficits in noncognitive skills later in life and, thus, help identify those in need of early intervention. These results demonstrate the relevance of noncognitive skills in development for personal and public health outcomes.

Behavioral health policy for improving population health and wellbeing: opportunities for investment in evidence-based policymaking.

The high cost of behavioral health problems across the population continues to highlight the need to integrate high-quality behavioral interventions across a variety of service settings. To successfully achieve such a system-wide transformation will require supporting federal policies that invest in sustainable high-quality services. To support these efforts we provide a mixed-method study of all federal mental health legislation over the last three decades. Results indicate that mental and behavioral health policies have grown. Further, specific characteristics that comprise bills that are successfully enacted into law are identified. Finally, opportunities for the field to engage with policymakers to support widespread integration of behavioral health services are offered.

The role of psychology in evidence-based policymaking: Mapping opportunities for strategic investment in poverty reduction.

Increasing efforts are being undertaken to understand how to improve the use of research evidence in policy settings. In particular, growing efforts to understand the use of research in legislative contexts. Although high-profile examples of psychology's contributions to public policy exist-particularly around antipoverty legislation-little systematic review has quantified how the field has informed federal policy across time. Recognizing the importance of exploring psychology's use in policymaking, we provide an overview of psychology's presence in federal antipoverty legislation over the last 2 decades by reviewing the over 6,000 antipoverty bills introduced to the U.S. Congress since 1993 for mentions of psychology. Further, to explore how psychology's contributions are related to policymakers' attributions about the causes of poverty, their public statements and voting behavior is considered. Key gaps in our scientific knowledge for informing poverty-related policy are identified. Opportunities to enhance the relevance of psychology in poverty reduction efforts, including the evidence-based policy movement, are described. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

At what cost? Examining the cost effectiveness of a universal social-emotional learning program.

Although implementation of universal social-emotional learning programs is becoming more common in schools, few studies have examined the cost-effectiveness of such programs. As such, the purpose of this article is two fold. First, we provide an overview of cost-effectiveness methods for school-based programs, and second, we share results of a cost-effectiveness analysis (CEA) of a universal social-emotional learning (SEL) program, the Social Skills Improvement System-Classwide Intervention Program (SSIS-CIP; Elliott & Gresham, 2007). Specifically, we compared the cost-effectiveness of SSIS-CIP implementation across first- and second-grade classrooms, and results indicated that second grade is the more cost-effective option for implementing the SSIS-CIP. Several considerations are discussed regarding cost-effectiveness analysis of universal SEL programs as well as the importance of using CEA results to inform programming decisions. (PsycINFO Database Record

A Framework for Valuing Investments in a Nurturing Society: Opportunities for Prevention Research.

Investing in strategies that aim to build a more nurturing society offers tremendous opportunities for the field of prevention science. Yet, scientists struggle to consistently take their research beyond effectiveness evaluations and actually value the impact of preventive strategies. Ultimately, it is clear that convincing policymakers to make meaningful investments in children and youth will require estimates of the fiscal impact of such strategies across public service systems. The framework offered here values such investments. First, we review current public spending on children and families. Then, we describe how to quantify and monetize the impact of preventive interventions. This includes a new measurement strategy for assessing multisystem service utilization and a price list for key service provision from public education, social services, criminal justice, health care and tax systems.