The overarching goal of the parent grant is to test the impact of an empirically derived implementation strategy—under real-world conditions and across youth public service systems—on successful adoption and sustainment of evidence-based substance use programs.

Throughout implementation efforts, there are measurable indicators of implementation and intervention fidelity that can be integrated into routine purveyor support to increase not only the likelihood of successful implementation, but of sustainment. Using the Stages of Implementation Completion (SIC1), purveyors from three participating substance abuse prevention evidence-based practices (EBPs), developed with NIDA funding (TFCO2, MDFT3, KEEP4), receive

(1) SIC Coaching: data-driven feedback regarding newly adopting sites from each of their respective EBPs, integrated into standard purveyor support, or

(2) standard: purveyor support without feedback to sites, based on random assignment of sites.

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, purveyors across all three EBPs have noted varying levels of disruption in active implementations and significant concerns about potential failures. They have independently requested a method for tracking the pandemic’s varied impacts on both active and incoming implementations, and a system that can identify targets for increased supports to mitigate negative effects on implementation.

Prominently used frameworks in implementation science—including the Exploration, Preparation, Implementation, and Sustainment (EPIS5) on which the parent grant is grounded—note the influence of outer context factors on implementation. The COVID-19 pandemic highlights the rapid pace at which outer context factors can impact decisions regarding forthcoming adoptions of EBPs as well as ongoing implementation. This supplement request would develop a system to assess, target, and attempt to mitigate the potential negative outer context implications of COVID-19 on the parent study and/or post-pandemic implementation sites.

The parent grant leverages a continually growing repository of implementation process data from 1,750 implementations across service systems (e.g., criminal justice, child welfare, substance abuse). This provides a diverse dataset—including ongoing sites in various stages of implementation, as well as discontinued and competent sites, for norms-based modeling. With 602 ongoing implementations, including the 39 randomized teams, the repository is a promising avenue for real-time observation, measurement, and evaluation of the impact of COVID-19 on organizations and systems. These data afford a unique opportunity to examine NOT- DA-20-047 priorities, particularly the potential to “understand system- or organizational-level responses to identify, prevent, or mitigate the impact of COVID-19 in service settings that serve vulnerable populations.”

This supplement includes development of a tracking and feedback system module to include assessment of COVID-19 impact on implementations. Though addressing urgent needs emerging from COVID-19, the module has broader potential for tracking impact of outer context factors in any implementation effort.