Dr. Brenda Miller will provide an overview of some of the structural barriers and facilitators for delivering effective interventions to families with adolescents. These interventions are designed to strengthen resilience and prevent adolescent emotional, mental, and behavioral problems—a major challenge in this time of COVID. She will describe how the larger community’s beliefs, values, attitudes, and practices can be important to the effectiveness of prevention efforts. These can determine the extent to which there is trust and communication that can support healthy and resilient families. From her own research and other sources, she will discuss existing community infrastructures that can provide critical support to such resilience. Past research on family-based interventions has shown the difficulty in reaching families with effective interventions. Dr. Miller will describe how online self-directed interventions can expand delivery to reach more families in the community. She will examine internal organizational characteristics and dynamics that are relevant to building an effective implementation infrastructure. These will look at some characteristics and dynamics that are especially important to families. Finally, examples of policy and legal approaches for supporting resilient families will be presented. An open discussion, led off by Dr. Doug Coatsworth, will follow the presentation. The discussion will highlight opportunities for addressing barriers and facilitators for intervention delivery, as well as approaches for improving the resilience of families in communities.
https://www.apsintl.org/event-details/familyresili
