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Abstract

At the National Bridging the Research and Practice Gap Symposium to discuss evidence-based practice (EBP) in social work, 150 participants attended five breakout groups to address real practice setting applications. These participants from social work academia and practice communities addressed issues and looked for solutions to promote research–practice integration. Their discussions of EBP implementation issues identified five areas of focus, including the urgent need to (1) provide training, (2) design interventions based on developmental and cultural competence, (3) plan research-informed strategies with an effective infrastructure, (4) initiate research–practice integration in the process of developing social work interventions, and (5) prepare future practitioners and educators to begin collaborative work. Their recommendations focused on people-oriented, skills-based preparations, such as the provision of consumer-oriented EBP information, intervention applications and observations, development of formal training programs to connect academia to field practice, and a planning process to develop competence-based EBP curricula and practice bases.

Keywords

evidence-based practice practice–research integration social work educators social work practitioner-researchers EBP training

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Research–Practice Integration in Real Practice Settings

Abstract

Keywords

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References