Perkins completes UK translation

Our visiting US professor, Daniel Perkins, has returned home to Pennsylvania and Penn State University at the weekend with messages about UK research implementation efforts and the attractions of an English summer.

Professor Perkins joined the Unit in August 2008 to improve our understanding of “translational” skills – aspects of the new scientific approach to disseminating and implementing evidence-based programmes.
 
He has also helped us to explore a relationship with the influential Prevention Research Centre at Penn State University where he is Professor of Family and Youth Resilience and Policy.
 
His role at the Unit has included shaping our evolving partnership with the City Council in Birmingham. He has helped to establish three pioneering randomised controlled trials there and steered investigations into the effectiveness of the PATHS, Triple P and The Incredible Years programmes.
 
Of the lessons learned, he says:
 
"Especially in these its formative years, dissemination and implementation science call for multidisciplinary thinking and collaboration between scholars and practitioners.
 
The rubber meets the road in the everyday detail of rolling out programmes.
 
Planning is essential but so is an unflagging willingness to solve practical problems as they occur.
 
Relationships are the bedrock of implementation: programmes cannot be built or sustained without good communications.
 
You always need to communicate more frequently than you think you do! In the midst of all the practical concerns, the biggest challenge is to protect the integrity of scientific method. Without it, knowledge and children’s lives will never be improved."
 
Wife Tammy, daughters Brighid and Kiera and son Colman returned home in the spring and left him alone with the wet English July. "The stereotype is absolutely accurate," he says.