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Community‐based research requires the involvement of both the community and researchers to investigate the influence of existing political, social and structural factors on the health of individuals and communities. In the Bekaa Valley of Lebanon, a community‐based intervention is proposed, as part of an EU INCO DEV‐funded project that aims to assess reproductive health care among Bedouin in Lebanon and Jordan. This intervention intends to train Bedouin community health volunteers (CHVs) to spread reproductive and child health knowledge and awareness among the Bedouin community and link them to the existing primary health care centres. The challenges facing this intervention relate to the existing political atmosphere and the difficult process of building and maintaining a partnership between the research team and the Bedouin. Evidence from the data‐collection phase and the current implementation phase of the Bedouin project has shown that the positive outcomes that result from community‐based interventions can be outweighed by the burden of obstacles and challenges that arise. These have to be carefully anticipated and tackled to guarantee a successful intervention. This paper will explore these obstacles and highlight some recommendations for implementing a community‐based intervention on the basis of our experience with the Bedouin.

Despite the well-known positive effects of fruits and vegetables, their consumption in many countries is lower than those recommended. This study aims to systematically examine the effects of community-based interventions on fruits and vegetables consumption in adults.

To collect relevant publications, the authors searched electronic databases including PubMed/MEDLINE, Scopus and Web of Science from January 2000 to July 2021. Considering random models, this study analyzed the data using weighted mean differences (WMD) and 95% confidence intervals (CI).

Among 1,621 retrieved publications, 21 articles met the inclusion criteria. The overall effect size demonstrated that, at the end of the trials, the educational interventions increased the consumption of aggregated fruits and vegetables (WMD: 0.55 serving/day, 95%CI: 0.34, 0.77), and vegetables (WMD: 0.15, 95%CI: 0.09, 0.21, I2: 33.2%; p = 0.103) in the intervention groups, compared to the control groups.

The subgroup analyses that were based on the type of interventions (face-to-face education compared to online interventions), location (home-based compared to the other types of interventions) and duration (24 weeks and higher) of interventions, and accompanied financial support reduced between-group heterogeneity. An efficient interventional program on increasing fruits and vegetables consumption should be part of a multi-component project.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, no systematic review and meta-analysis has provided a summary of the effects of community-based interventions on fruits and vegetables consumption in adult populations, and there is no fixed conclusion that could be drawn in this regard.

The purpose of this study is to determine the impact of community-based and driven approaches during the lockdowns and early periods of the pandemic. The study examines the impact and perceptions of the state-led intervention. This would help to discover a better approach for postpandemic interventions and policy responses.

This article used the inductive method and gathered its data from surveys. In search of global opinions on COVID-19 responses received in communities, two countries in each continent with high COVID-19 infection per 100,000 during the peak period were chosen for study. In total, 13 community workers, leaders and members per continent were sampled. The simple percentile method was chosen for analysis. The simple interpretation was used to discuss the results.

The study showed that poor publicity of community-based interventions affected awareness and fame as most were mistaken for government interventions. The study found that most respondents preferred state interventions but preferred many communities or local assessments of projects and interventions while the projects were ongoing to adjust the project and intervention as they progressed. However, many preferred community-based and driven interventions.

State secrecy and perceived opposition oppression limited data sourcing for this study in countries where state interventions are performed in secret and oppression of perceived opposition voices limited data collection in some countries. Thus, last-minute changes were made to gather data from countries on the same continent. An intercontinental study requires data from more countries, which would require more time and resources. This study was affected by access to locals in remote areas where raw data would have benefited the study.

The absence of data from the two most populous countries due to government censorship limits access to over a third of the global population, as they make up 2.8 out of 7 billion.

The choice of two countries in each continent is representational enough, yet the absence of data from the two most populous countries creates a social identity gap.

The survey collected unique and genuine data and presents novel results. Thus, this study provides an important contribution to the literature on the subject. There is a need for maximum support for community-based interventions and projects as well as global data collection on community-based or driven interventions and projects.

Systems of care and evidence-based practice possess distinct histories. Though each developed out of attempts to improve services to youth with emotional and behavioral disorders, they did so from perspectives so different as to appear diametrically opposed. Service systems exist at multiple levels, including the practice, program, and system levels (Rosenblatt, 1988, 2005; Rosenblatt & Woodbridge, 2003). Research on health and mental health service systems similarly varies, often by level of the service system, with the research methods, independent and dependent variables, populations of interest, and ultimately the consumers of the research product interacting differentially in the creation and understanding of what constitutes a knowledge base for service delivery. Systems of care and, with limited exceptions, evidence-based practices exist at different levels of the service delivery structure, require and derive from different research approaches, and speak to overlapping but historically different audiences.

Mindfulness-based interventions – which train capacities for attention, awareness, compassion, and self-regulation of thoughts and emotions – may offer unique benefits for urban youth exposed to chronic stress and adversity. Urban schools are promising settings in which to integrate mindfulness-based interventions; however, they pose complex challenges for intervention implementation and evaluation.

The paper reflects on the experiences of our community-academic partnership conducting two school-based randomised trials on a mindfulness and yoga programme. The programme was developed by the Holistic Life Foundation and was delivered to middle school students in public schools serving disadvantaged urban communities.

This paper discusses barriers and facilitating factors related to effective intervention delivery and evaluation, presents recommendations for future work and reflects on the potential benefits of mindfulness-based practices for students, teachers and schools.

The paper offers a detailed account of challenges and opportunities associated with implementing mindfulness-based practices in urban school settings.

Evidence on implementing effective adolescent mental health promotion and prevention interventions in the European context is underdeveloped. The purpose of this paper is to identify evidence-based mental health promotion and prevention interventions for adolescents that have been developed and/or implemented across the school, community and digital settings in Europe. This review also sought to identify the relevant implementation processes in relation to what works, for whom and under what circumstances.

A narrative synthesis of the evidence was conducted which included two stages: a systematic search of studies assessing adolescent mental health promotion and prevention interventions; and a selection of interventions with the most robust evidence base, using pre-defined criteria, that have been either developed and/or implemented in Europe.

A total of 16 interventions met the inclusion criteria. The majority of interventions were school-based programmes. The review findings support the delivery of interventions aimed at enhancing young people’s social and emotional learning (SEL) and preventing behavioural problems. Results indicate that the effective delivery of SEL interventions on a school-wide basis could provide an important platform on which other universal interventions such as anxiety and bullying prevention, and targeted depression prevention could be developed in a multi-tiered fashion. There were a limited number of studies providing robust evidence on the effectiveness of suicide prevention, digital and community-based interventions.

This review identifies a number of robust evidence-based promotion and prevention interventions for promoting adolescent mental health. While the interventions have been implemented in Europe, the majority has not been evaluated rigorously and few included detailed information on the quality of programme implementation. Evidence of the effective cross-cultural transferability of these interventions needs to be strengthened, including more systematic research on their implementation across diverse country contexts.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss how a “holistic approach” is enacted in two interventions accommodating the same target group, young adults with offending behaviour and drug use experiences, but offered in very different contexts, the Prison Service and the community. The aim is to show how enactments of a “holistic approach”, although similar on paper, differ in welfare institutional practices due especially to organisational and structural conditions.

The paper is based on qualitative semi-structured interviews and written material from and about the two interventions.

Different enactments of a “holistic approach”, due to organisational and structural conditions of the interventions, construct different possibilities for institutional identities. These insights could be useful to take into consideration when discussing prevention initiatives (in a broad sense) for young people with complex problems, including co-occurring offending behaviour and drug use experience.

Research with a focus on citizens with complex problems who do not comply with OR conform to standard welfare institutions are limited. The authors contribute to this literature by focussing on young adults with offending behaviour and drug experiences.

The purpose of this paper is to review the effectiveness of social marketing interventions in influencing individual behaviour and bringing about environmental and policy‐level changes in relation to alcohol, tobacco, illicit drugs and physical activity. Social marketing is the use of marketing concepts in programmes designed to influence the voluntary behaviour of target audiences in order to improve health and society.

The paper is a review of systematic reviews and primary studies using pre‐specified search and inclusion criteria. Social marketing interventions were defined as those which adopted specified social marketing principles in their development and implementation.

The paper finds that a total of 54 interventions met the inclusion criteria. There was evidence that interventions adopting social marketing principles could be effective across a range of behaviours, with a range of target groups, in different settings, and can influence policy and professional practice as well as individuals.

As this was a systematic paper, the quality of included studies was reasonable and many were RCTs. However, many of the multi‐component studies reported overall results only and research designs did not allow for the efficacy of different components to be compared. When reviewing social marketing effectiveness it is important not to rely solely on the “label” as social marketing is often misrepresented; there is a need for social marketers to clearly define their approach.

The paper shows that social marketing can form an effective framework for behaviour change interventions and can provide a useful “toolkit” for organisations that are trying to change health behaviours.

The research described in this paper represents one of the few systematic examinations of social marketing effectiveness and is based on a clear definition of “social marketing”. It highlights both social marketing's potential to achieve change in different behavioural contexts and its ability to work at individual, environmental and wider policy levels.

The purpose of this paper is to detail a project that created a community-based mentoring intervention for sexually abused children and adolescents. The project features the use of family and community strengths, trauma sensitivity, current research and ecological theory to develop a curriculum for training mentors.

This study used Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) methods to create a community-based intervention designed for sexually abused children and adolescents. This model supports the building and maintenance of the often fluid and relationship-driven processes that are characteristic of CBPR. The stages included: identification of research questions; assessment of community strengths, assets and challenges; defining priorities; developing research and data collection methodologies; collecting and analysing data; interpretation of findings; dissemination of findings; and applying findings to address action.

The results include a recommendation to include community members in interventions for sexually abused adolescents.

The results of this study include recommendations for a culturally relevant training curriculum for mentors of sexually abused children and adolescents. Hallmarks of the resulting curriculum included using a hybrid of natural and programme mentors and inclusion of trauma sensitivity in training the mentors. The results from the pilot study are not generalisable since the pilot only included a small number of mentors and the effectiveness of the intervention was not tested. Further research is needed to determine the effectiveness of the intervention.

The paper includes implications for further development of a mentoring curriculum for sexually abused children and adolescents. This curriculum promotes several potential benefits, including: incorporation of families and communities in discussion and awareness of sexual abuse and trauma sensitivity; and formal training for individuals who have the potential to remain important in the life of the child or adolescent long after formal services have ceased.

The literature shows a lack of community level interventions for sexually abused children and adolescents. The focus of this project was to expand the traditional ecological context of mentoring from a micro or individual level intervention to a community level intervention.

Community-based HIV testing and counselling (HTC) has been recommended for improving access to prevention, care, and treatment services in at-risk populations. Earlier systematic reviews and meta-analyses have been undertaken, but due to some methodological limitations, their findings do not yet provide a practical significance. The purpose of this paper is to re-examine the recent evidence of the efficacy of community-based HTC approaches on the uptake of HTC in at-risk populations.

The database of PubMed online, Science Direct, the Lancet Global Health, the Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and Google Scholar were systematically searched using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines to obtain empirical papers published between March 2013 and December 2015.

Of 600 collected papers, there were 6 cluster randomized trials papers which met the inclusion criteria. Compared to the health facilities-based HTC, community-based HTC approaches have been shown to improve the uptake of HIV testing from 5.8 to 37 per cent, and improve HIV testing in men and their partners together from 6.8 to 34 per cent. The community approaches also detected lower HIV-positive cases (0.29 per cent as compared to 4 per cent), improved access to treatment services from 0.3 to 25 per cent, demonstrated higher cluster differentiation 4 count in newly diagnosed patients (median of 400-438 cells/µl), and increased the rate of first-time HIV testing from 9 to 11.8 per cent. With respect to social and behavioural outcomes, community-based HTC increased social norms for HIV testing by 6 per cent (95 per cent CI 3-9), decreased multiple sex partners by 55 per cent (95 per cent CI 42-73), lowered casual sex by 45 per cent (95 per cent CI 33-62), increased knowledge about HIV (83.2 vs 28.9 per cent), improved positive attitudes towards HIV patients (73.0 vs 34.3 per cent), and increased the use of condoms (28.0 vs 12.3 per cent).

Community-based HTC combined with behavioural interventions have been found to be more effective in increasing the uptake of HIV testing as well as other outcomes as compared to the conventional health facilities-based testing and counselling approaches.