ABOUT RCI

Adraham Wandersman, PhD

Abraham Wandersman Ph.D is a Professor of Psychology at the University of South Carolina-Columbia. He received his Ph.D from Cornell University in the following areas of specialization: social psychology, environmental psychology, and social organization and change. He was interim Co-Director of the Institute for Families in Society at the University of South Carolina. Dr. Wandersman performs research and program evaluation on citizen participation in community organizations and coalitions and on interagency collaboration. He is a co-author of Prevention Plus III and a co-editor of Empowerment Evaluation: Knowledge and Tools for Self Assessment and Accountability and of many other books and articles. In 1998, he received the Myrdal Award for Evaluation Practice from the American Evaluation Association. In 2000, he was elected President of Division 27 of the American Psychological Association (Community Psychology), The Society for Community Research and Action. In 2001, he was first author on a paper on PIE (Planning, Implementation, Evaluation) which won a presidential prize from the American Evaluation Association for Mainstreaming Evaluation. In 2004, he co-authored the RAND publication of Getting To Outcomes-2004: Promoting Accountability Through Methods and Tools for Planning, Implementation and Evaluation. In 2005, Dr. Wandersman was awarded the Distinguished Theory and Research Contibutions Award by the Society for Community Research and action. Wandersman is currently Co P.I. on a CDC participatory research study of an empowerment evaluation system, funded by CDC. He and his colleagues are studying the training, technical assistance and utilization of the Getting To Outcomes results-based accountability approach. The GTO system GTO uses 10 accountability questions; addressing the 10 questions involves a comprehensive approach to results-based accountability that includes evaluation and much more. It includes: needs and resource assessment, identifying goals, target populations, desired outcomes (objectives), science and best practices, logic models, fit of programs with existing programs, planning, implementation with fidelity, process evaluation, outcome evaluation, continuous quality improvement, and sustainability. Dr. Wandersman is also working on a project for the Program Implementation and Dissemination Branch of the CDC's Center for Injury Prevention; the project develops a framework on "how to bring what has been shown to work in child maltreatment prevention and youth violence prevention into more widespread practice" by using both research to practice models and community-centered models..

Dr. Wandersman has worked on evaluations of coalitions for substance abuse prevention since 1990. He is currently engaged in the development of iGTO, an interactive web-based system that promotes results-based accountability in interventions.

Dr. Wandersman serves or has served on a number of advisory committees for prevention including: Technology Transfer Consortium of NIMH Office on AIDS, U.S. Conference of Mayors' Advisory Committee on HIV Community Prevention Planning, Technical Assistance Committee of the National Evaluation of CSAP Community Partnerships, Technical Support Group for the CSAP evaluation of Training and Technical Assistance, the Prevention Working Group of the Center for Mental Health Services, Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America (CADCA) Expert Advisory Committees, and the Board of the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregiving.