Project Portfolio

NIRN has been very fortunate to have the opportunity to engage in national and global initiatives across human services. The following is brief review of the types of projects in which NIRN is and has been engaged recently.

Table of Contents

Implementation Practice, Policy, and Science

Global Implementation Initiative

Funders: Governments and philanthropies from several nations
Establish a forum for transdisciplinary collaboration to rapidly advance the science, policy, and practice of implementation, organization change, and system transformation.  The first Global Implementation Conference (GIC) in 2011 convened over 800 implementation practitioner, scientists, and policy makers from the spectrum of human services from 25 nations.
GIC 2013 - Washington, DC
www.implementationconference.org
Co-Chair: Dean Fixsen

Education

State Implementation of Scaling-Up Evidence-based Practices (SISEP)

Funder: US Department of Education, Office of Special Education Program
Develop implementation capacity to support the full and effective uses of evidence-based interventions and other innovations in all schools to benefit students statewide.
Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, North Carolina, Oregon, Virginia
State Readiness Community of Practice
Coaching for Competence Community of Practice
TA Center Collaborations
www.scalingup.org
Co-PIs: Dean Fixsen and Karen Blase

Developing Implementation Capacity County-wide

Funder: Placer County Office of Education (PCOE)
Develop implementation capacity to fully support the use of evidence-based practices across county initiatives and to establish Implementation Teams.
California
http://www.placercoe.k12.ca.us/Pages/default.aspx
Consultants: Michelle Duda and Barbara Sims

Creating District Level Implementation Supports

Funder: Wilson Language Training
Create and sustain high fidelity implementation at the district level. Phase one is the establishment of an Implementation Science resource network; Phase two includes a review of district level literacy and implementation measures.
United States
http://www.wilsonlanguage.com/
Consultants: Michelle Duda and Barbara Sims

RTI Consortium

Funder: Chapel Hill-Carrboro City Schools
Assist representatives from educational districts to operationalize “Response to Intervention,” to develop functional performance assessment tools and effective coaching processes and to develop linking communication protocols to the State’s effort to “scale up” RTI.
North Carolina
Consultant: Melissa Van Dyke

Child Welfare

Permanency Innovation Initiative Technical Assistance Providers (PII-TAP)

Funder: JBS International and Administration for Children and Families
Develop implementation capacity and assessments within six organizations designed to reduce the number of children in long-term foster care, reduce time spent in foster care, and facilitate transitions to permanent homes.
Arizona, California (2), Illinois, Kansas, Nevada
http://www.acf.hhs.gov/news/press/2010/reduce_longterm_foster_care.html
Co-PIs: Karen Blase and Allison Metz

Child Wellbeing Project

Funder: The Duke Endowment
Provide intensive, implementation-focused technical assistance to promote the scaling-up of evidence-based practices to improve child and family outcomes post-permanency, and a program evaluation to assess implementation fidelity and outcomes.
Catawba County, North Carolina
http://www.dukeendowment.org/issues/children/child-welfare-overview/strategy/child-welfare-catawba
PI: Allison Metz

Implementing Alternative Response in Ohio

Funder: American Humane Association and the State Supreme Court of Ohio
Seed and develop the capacity of a state implementation team to support the statewide implementation of “alternative response (AR),” develop coaching skills of child welfare supervisors, and build the capacity of the state to provide ongoing consultation and training on coaching for the AR model.
Ohio
http://www.americanhumane.org/protecting-children/programs/differential-response/current-projects/ohio-alternative-response.html
PI: Allison Metz

Implementation-Informed PIP Process

Funder: JBS International and Administration for Children and Families
Develop the capacity of Children’s Bureau federal and regional staff, consultants, and training and technical assistance (T/TA) providers to utilize the principles of implementation science to strengthen the Child and Family Services Reviews and Program Improvement Planning and better equip public child welfare agencies to institute and sustain systemic changes in child welfare.
United States
Consultants: Allison Metz and Melissa Van Dyke

Implementation of Evidence-Based Models in Child Welfare

Funder: NYC Administration for Children’s Services
Consult with NYC ACS to support the development of a system-wide infrastructure to promote the high-fidelity use of EBMs in a range of child welfare service settings.
New York
Consultant: Allison Metz (Leah Bartley, Melissa Van Dyke)

Early Childhood Development and Family Support

Developing the Implementation Capacity of the FRIENDS National Resource Center

Funder:  Chapel Hill Training Outreach Project and Administration for Children and Families
Provide implementation informed consultation and services and work to develop the capacity of the FRIENDS National Resource Center staff to utilize implementation-informed approaches in their work with Community-based Child Abuse Prevention State Leads and with Supporting Evidence-based Home Visitation grantees.
United States
http://www.friendsnrc.org/  and http://www.supportingebhv.org/
Co-PIs: Melissa Van Dyke and Sandy Naoom

Expanding and Improving Evidence-based Home Visitation

Funder: North Carolina Division of Public Health
Increase the knowledge base of key state and county Family Strengthening stakeholders related to the science and practice of implementation, systems transformation, and scale-up of evidence-based practices; and guide and support key stakeholders in the development of an infrastructure to support quality implementation and scale-up of effective home visitation practices across the state.
North Carolina
Co-PIs:  Melissa Van Dyke and Sandra Naoom

Building Implementation Capacity to Promote and Support Evidence-based Home Visitation

Funder: Thrive by Five Washington State
To provide general and targeted capacity building by developing professional development opportunities, training, and technical assistance for specific models/programs to support quality implementation of home visiting services, in order to increase the knowledge base of Implementation HUB staff related to the science and practice of implementation, systems transformation, and scale-up of evidence-based practices. The development of capacity in this area will assist Implementation HUB staff in pursuing the development of an infrastructure to support quality implementation and scale-up of effective home visitation practices across the state.
Washington State
Co-PIs:  Sandra Naoom and Melissa Van Dyke

TACSEI – Technical Assistance Center on Social Emotional Intervention for young children with and at risk of developmental disabilities

Funder: Office of Special Education – UNC Subcontract with the University of South Florida
Develop the capacity of early childhood centers, programs, and pre-schools to include children with disabilities and utilize the Pyramid Model to promote social emotional development of children birth to five; intensive capacity development in a limited number of states.
United States
www.challengingbehavior.org
Consultant: Karen Blase

Early Learning Challenge Transformation Zone

Funder: North Carolina Early Childhood Advisory Council
Coordinate and develop implementation capacity to support the full and effective uses of evidence-based interventions and other innovations in all communities to benefit young children in a geographic region of the state to inform statewide scale-up.
North Carolina
Investigator: Melissa Van Dyke

Health/Public Health

Building Implementation Capacity for Rehabilitative Services

Funder: Rick Hansen Institute (National) subcontract thought the Ontario Neurotrauma Foundation (ONF)
Contribute to building the implementation capacity of ONF and rehabilitation health providers to define and install a package of best practices for treatment of secondary complications for individuals with spinal cord injuries, A secondary dimension of this work is to create centers of excellence within rehabilitation hospitals in three large Canadian provinces: Alberta (Calgary, Edmonton), Ontario (Toronto, London) and Quebec (Montreal, Quebec City).
Canada
PI: Michelle Duda

Implementing Evidence-based Public Health Approaches

Funder: Division of Intervention and Implementation research, Institutionen för Folkhälsovetenskap, Karolinska Institutet
Develop implementation capacity and research strategies to support evidence-based approaches to public health nationally.
Sweden
Consultant: Dean Fixsen

Implementing Evidence-based Elder Care Approaches

Funder: National Board of Health and Welfare, Department of Knowledge Based Policy and Guidance
Contribute to implementation capacity to support evidence-based approaches to elder care nationally.
Sweden
Consultant: Dean Fixsen

UN Group for Maternal and Child Health

Funder: Various United Nations agencies, USAID, CDC, and Gates Foundation
Contribute to designs for building implementation capacity to dramatically reduce the incidence of maternal death before, during, and after child birth in the 25 nations where 80% of the 9 million deaths occur each year.
Global
Consultant: Dean Fixsen, Herbert Peterson, Joumana Haidar

Mental Health/Substance Abuse

Building Implementation Capacity Child Behavioral Development

Funder: The Norwegian Center for Child Behavioral Development, Atferdssenteret - Norsk senter for studier av problematferd og innovativ praksis - Universitet i Oslo
Contribute to building implementation capacity and to the design and methods for research on implementation components.
Norway
Consultant: Dean Fixsen

Building Implementation Capacity for Research

Funder: Servicestyrelsen/The National Board of Social Services
Contribute to building implementation capacity and to the design and methods for research on implementation components.
Denmark
Consultant: Dean Fixsen

Developing Implementation Capacity for Service and Research

Funder: Center for Effective Services
Contribute to building implementation capacity across human services nationally and to the design and methods for research on implementation components.
Ireland
Consultant: Karen Blase

Criminal Justice

Evidence-Based Decision Making in Local Criminal Justice Systems

Funder: Center for Effective Public Policy
Provide implementation-informed guidance to a team of technical assistance providers who work directly with seven local jurisdictions that are implementing complex criminal justice reform initiatives.
United States
http://ebdmoneless.org/home
Consultant: Melissa Van Dyke

Measurement

Fidelity Cross-Validation Study

Funder: IES
Within the context of a large-scale study to validate several classroom-level instruments (observation protocol, teacher log, teacher questionnaire) that measure the implementation of reform-based mathematics and science instructional materials programs in the elementary grades, development of a Student Questionnaire to complement and triangulate constructs measuring student engagement, one component of fidelity, and teacher instructional practices within the teacher questionnaire. This student measure will be piloted through cognitive interviews and further refined, prior to field testing. The questionnaire will be field tested with students in 27 3rd – 5th grade classrooms whose teachers complete the Teacher Instructional Questionnaire. The field test will enable instrument cross-validation examining the agreement between teacher and student reports.
Illinois
Consultant: Sandra Naoom