Research to practice: efforts to bring effective prevention to every community

This manuscript describes the pioneering efforts of the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's attempts to catalog knowledge, support, and further evaluate the application of evidence-based prevention. The paper begins with a discussion of scientific inquiry, including discussion of cause-and-effect relationships, theory that is useful in explaining those relationships, and suggestion of the opportunities and limitations of research in these and other areas. The authors then describe a system that has been introduced by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration's (SAMHSA) Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) to systematically access and review applied research efforts in drug abuse prevention and related fields. In addition to identifying the key elements of this National Registry of Effective Prevention Programs (NREPP), the authors provide a brief history of prior efforts that have led us to this point.