The Fast Track Project: Towards the prevention of severe conduct problems in school-age youth.

Conduct Problems Prevention Research Group. (2006). The Fast Track Project: Towards the prevention of severe conduct problems in school-age youth. In N. Heinrichs, K. Hahlweg, & M. Döpfner (Eds.), Strengthening families: Different evidence-based approaches to support child mental health (pp. 439-477). Psychotherapie Verlag.

Abstract: In this chapter, we provide an overview of the Fast Track project as an illustration of new directions evident in prevention science. In 1993, Coie and colleagues described prevention science as a new research discipline being formed at the interface of a number of professional emphases and disciplines, including psychopathology, criminology, psychiatric epidemiology, human development, and education. Prevention science represents an effort to examine risk factors, change processes and intervention effects, using highly rigorous methodology, and thus to provide an empirical basis for the early prevention efforts initiated originally by community psychologists. Coie and colleagues suggested five principles integral to prevention science: 1) prevention programs should address fundamental causal processes; 2) prevention programs should address risk factors before they become stabilized; 3) prevention programs should target those children who are at high risk for the negative outcome to be prevented; 4) prevention programs should optimally involve coordinated activities in multiple domains; and; 5) developmental research has important implications for prevention science.