To build the public community-centered prevention system of the future, agencies and programs must develop their own evidence and models, whether they are designed to affect individual behavior, modify peer group dynamics, improve organizational systems, or advance laws, policies, and practices to mitigate the social-structural factors that put communities at risk. Community organizations and neighborhood leaders cannot accomplish this without the expertise of trained researchers, but expert researchers must work in partnership with communities and help communities take a leading role in such efforts. Researchers must not treat communities and neighborhoods as mere data sources and content providers for their academic research agenda.
The Evidence Generation initiative focuses on the creation and application of credible evidence in the pursuit of safer, healthier, and more equitable communities. The initiative is not simply an effort to support the use of evidence-based programs identified by previous studies. The academic research community often evaluates programs for changing the behavior of individuals known to be public safety risks. Community-centered and culturally responsive prevention strategies, however, can be neglected by conventional researchers, largely because their effects are more challenging to measure and assess.
Policymakers, service professionals, and their community partners deserve high-quality information about the impact of prevention programs and policies. In setting priorities, program models that have already been proven effective and efficient are naturally preferred over programs that have yet to be tested by rigorous evaluation. Such preferences, however, should not be sacrosanct. Policymakers and funding sources should be encouraged to think of the evidence base as an ever-changing source of knowledge. The search for credible evidence is an ongoing process. We should never assume that all possible evidence-based practices have already been discovered.
The Evidence Generation initiative at John Jay College is focused on training new generations of applied researchers to grow the evidence base of the future. Much of this work must occur outside of traditional academia. The Evidence Generation initiative is dedicated to the training and development of competent researchers and data analysts who are focused on strengthening the effects of public agencies, community-based organizations, and citizen groups. We train researchers for careers in the generation of open-access, readily accessible, and practically-oriented evidence for audiences outside of conventional academia. We train future community-based researchers, not only future professors.
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