Blueprints for Violence Prevention Replications: Factors for Implementation Success
By Sharon Mihalic, Abigail Fagan, Katherine Irwin, Diane Ballard, and Delbert Elliott

As science-based programs become more readily available to practitioners, the need for identifying and overcoming problems associated with the process of implementation becomes critical. A major goal of the Blueprints for Violence Prevention initiative has been to enhance the understanding of program implementation by studying the influence of human and systems-level factors that challenge the successful implementation of programs. This report describes the results of a process evaluation focused on discovering common implementation obstacles faced by sites implementing the Blueprints programs. The Blueprints team discovered and validated a number of conditions necessary for successful and sustained program implementation. The report first describes the Blueprints programs and the importance of implementation fidelity, and then describes the ways that planning, organizational, staffing, program champion, and proactive technical assistance factors influenced implementation quality. (2002)