2025 · Study · English

Early Effects of Communities That Care on the Adoption and Implementation Fidelity of Evidence-Based Prevention Programs in Communities: Results from a Quasi-experimental Study

Decker, L., von Holt, I., Ünlü, S., Walter, U., & Röding, D.

Decker, L., von Holt, I., Ünlü, S., Walter, U., & Röding, D. (2025). Early Effects of Communities That Care on the Adoption and Implementation Fidelity of Evidence-Based Prevention Programs in Communities: Results from a Quasi-experimental Study. Prevention Science, 26(6), 873–885. doi.org/10.1007/s11121-025-01823-w

Summary

Quasi-experimental study from the German CTC-EFF trial asking whether Communities That Care makes municipalities adopt more evidence-based prevention programmes (EBPs). Twenty-two intervention and 22 matched comparison communities in four federal states were surveyed twice (T0 2021/22, T1 2023/24) on which EBPs were running, how many people they reached and how faithfully they were delivered; 17 intervention and 12 comparison communities took part at baseline, and 15 and 11 entered the paired analyses. The groups did not differ at baseline. In CTC communities the mean number of EBPs per 10,000 residents rose from 3.57 to 8.57 (p = 0.004); in comparison communities the rise from 1.88 to 3.41 was not significant (p = 0.089). Reach grew in both groups without reaching significance, and fidelity stayed high throughout. As the first German outcome paper on CTC it suggests the system accelerates EBP uptake, with the caveats of possible confounding and a short observation window that calls for longer follow-up.