Social media plays a significant role in adolescents' lives, with both positive and negative effects. Implementing interventions to mitigate the negative aspects and enhance the positive ones could improve adolescents' well-being. Unfortunately, there is a scarcity of evidence-based interventions available. To fill this gap, we have developed a…

Background: Progress monitoring (PM) is the periodic and reliable assessment of client progress to evaluate and inform psychotherapeutic treatment. PM's use in a variety of treatment contexts show improved treatment outcome, dropout rate reduction, moderated treatment deterioration, and more efficient treatment delivery. Objective: This study…

As part of an ongoing, multi-million dollar Wallace Foundation initiative to improve and expand arts learning opportunities for young people, the Wallace Foundation, in partnership with the Boys & Girls Clubs of America (BGCA), developed the Youth Arts Initiative (YAI) to deliver otherwise inaccessible high-quality arts programs to low-income…

Executive skills are the cognitive abilities that make it possible for people to set goals, regulate impulses, and complete the steps necessary to achieve their objectives. Examples of these skills include time management, emotional control, and organization. Richard Guare and Peggy Dawson have developed a coaching strategy based on executive…

Background: HealthWise South Africa: Life Skills for Adolescents (HW) is an evidence-based substance use and sexual risk prevention program that emphasizes the positive use of leisure time. Since 2000, this program has evolved from pilot testing through an efficacy trial involving over 7,000 youth in the Cape Town area. Beginning in 2011, through…

This article provides a theory-based, step-by-step approach to intervention development and illustrates its application in India to design an intervention to promote tobacco-use cessation among school personnel in Bihar. We employed a five-step approach to develop the intervention using the Social Contextual Model of Health Behavior Change (SCM)…

Collaboration with religious institutions is recommended as a frontier for prevention science. Little is known about the effectiveness of programs currently disseminated by churches. This pilot program investigated potential advantages and disadvantages of university collaborations in faith settings, by implementing the Staying Connected with Your…

Background: Teachers need classroom-based programs to develop and support mental health fitness in adolescents because this age group faces significant challenges to their mental health. There is a paucity of such ready-made programs. This article describes the development and proposed implementation of a low-cost, effective, adaptable, 6-week,…

The Youth Incentive Entitlement Pilot Projects demonstration has been the most ambitious attempt thus far to determine the feasibility of using private employers to provide a work experience in a youth employment program. In establishing this demonstration, congress authorized program operators to recruit private businesses as well as the…

As part of a larger study to examine the usefulness of mentoring as an intervention serving at-risk youth, this study evaluated the implementation of two pilot programs in Saint Louis (Missouri) and Atlanta (Georgia). Both programs were at public agencies aiming to operate large-scale mentoring programs to serve adjudicated youth between the ages…