Part of the BCTR Talks at Twelve series.

Behavioral interventions are falling short of achieving public health impact. This is largely due to the traditional approach adopted in the development of the intervention: throw everything in but the kitchen sink and hope that somehow we see a change in our desired outcome. What if instead, we integrated principles of engineering, implementation science, health economics, and decision science into our process of intervention development? This presentation will introduce the multiphase optimization strategy (MOST) as a translational framework for intervention development through which the effectiveness of the intervention is balanced with its affordability, scalability, and efficiency. Optimized interventions hasten the progress of translational science and maximize public health impact.

Kate Guastaferro is an assistant professor in the Department of Social and Behavioral Sciences and associate director of the Center for Advancement and Dissemination of Intervention Optimization (cadio) at New York University. She earned a doctorate and master’s of public health from the School of Public Health at Georgia State University. Kate completed a T32 postdoctoral fellowship in the Prevention and Methodology Training program at Pennsylvania State University with advanced training centered substantively upon the prevention of child sexual abuse and methodologically on innovative methods for the optimization, evaluation, and dissemination of interventions (e.g., the multiphase optimization strategy [MOST]). She was an assistant research professor in the Department of Human Development and Family Studies at Penn State from 2017 – 2022. In 2020, she was the recipient of the Victoria S. Levin Award for Early Career Success in Young Children’s Mental Health from the Society for Research on Child Development. Working at the cutting edge of prevention and intervention science, Dr. Guastaferro’s program of research is devoted to the development, optimization, and evaluation of effective, efficient, economical, and scalable interventions, specifically focusing on the prevention of child maltreatment.