Translating research into community interventions: The Community Sexually Transmitted Disease Collaborative

Current national attention is focused on comparative clinical effectiveness research, the study of which prevention, treatment and care options work best. Much has been written on the selection, implementation,and evaluation of evidence-based individual patient interventions. However, comparative clinical effectiveness research needs to also include interventions aimed at broader community and systems change. The purpose of this paper is to present a participatory model of evidence-based community decision-making developed and implemented to address a long-standing community STD problem. In Fall 2010, the authors organized a collaborative composed of minority youth, young adults,and community agency members to a)examine and quantify assessment data surrounding our high STD incidence, b) identify possible acceptable avenues for interventions, c)develop specific evidence-based practice questions to guide the search for research-based intervention, d)search the literature to answer these questions, e) choose effective community-appropriate interventions identified in the literature to implement, and finally f) to evaluate the effectiveness of these interventions in our community. To date, the collaborative has developed four evidence-based questions and graduate students have presented research literature searches to answer them. The collaborative is currently adapting an evidence-based social networking intervention for use in our community. Among lessons learned are how to a) effectively integrate inner-city adolescents into community-based participatory research projects, b) how to facilitate the development of evidence-based practice questions for community and systems change, and c) how to gain input from community policy makers. Recommendations for future include a formal evaluation of the collaborative process by members, and implementation and evaluation of interventions.