What strategies are used to build practitioners' capacity to implement community-based interventions and are they effective?: a systematic review.

Numerous agencies are providing training, technical assistance, and other support to build community-based practitioners' capacity to adopt and implement evidence-based prevention interventions. Yet, little is known about how best to design capacity-building interventions to optimize their effectiveness. Wandersman et al. (Am J Community Psychol.50:445-59, 2102) proposed the Evidence-Based System of Innovation Support (EBSIS) as a framework to guide research and thereby strengthen the evidence base for building practitioners' capacity. The purpose of this review was to contribute to further development of the EBSIS by systematically reviewing empirical studies of capacity-building interventions to identify (1) the range of strategies used, (2) variations in the way they were structured, and (3) evidence for their effectiveness at increasing practitioners' capacity to use evidence-based prevention interventions.