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History of NREPP and Recent Changes

The current National Registry of Evidence-based Programs and Practices is the result of a lengthy, comprehensive process of expansion and revision that has taken place over the past few years.

NREPP's Beginnings: Model Programs Initiative

NREPP originated in 1997 in SAMHSA's Center for Substance Abuse Prevention (CSAP) as part of the Model Programs Initiative. Then called the National Registry of Effective Prevention Programs, NREPP was envisioned as a way to help professionals in the field become better consumers of substance abuse prevention programs.

More than 1,100 programs were reviewed and more than 150 were designated as Model, Effective, or Promising Programs under this system.

Expansion and Revision

In 2004, SAMHSA started the process of expanding this system to include interventions in mental health and substance abuse prevention and treatment. The agency also began looking at ways to improve the transparency, timeliness, and accuracy of information in NREPP. Rating evidence at the outcome level, rather than at the overall program level, was one critical way to provide more transparent information to the public. Through intensive study and discussion with stakeholders, a number of changes to the rating criteria and review methods were considered.

In 2005, SAMHSA proposed a new rating system and solicited public feedback on the plan.

The New NREPP

Launched in March 2007, SAMHSA's new registry--with its online searchable database--is designed to serve as a more comprehensive and interactive source of information than the previous system. In addition to descriptive information on interventions, NREPP now provides ratings for individual outcomes targeted by an intervention, rather than ratings of interventions overall. This emphasizes that many interventions are designed to achieve multiple outcomes and can be more (or less) effective in achieving some of these outcomes than others. NREPP's ratings and intervention summaries synthesize and evaluate the research on specific interventions and in this way can help potential users of these interventions better understand their scientific evidence base.

In addition, NREPP now evaluates and reports on a new dimension called Readiness for Dissemination, a concept not part of earlier NREPP reviews. This new dimension is essentially a measure of the availability and quality of training and implementation materials. The Readiness for Dissemination measure provides information on factors that may prove important in determining whether a particular intervention will be effective when implemented in typical or routine clinical or community-based settings.