Green List Prevention - An Evidence Registry for Prevention and Health Promotion in Germany

Abstract

Abstract Introduction Evidence-based prevention and health promotion will be supported by practice-relevant evidence registries. The Green List Prevention provides an overview of evidence-based prevention programs for children and youth in Germany. It was modeled after the U.S. Blueprints for Healthy Youth Development in the context of the Communities That Care community prevention system. Programs are reviewed for conceptual, implementation, and evaluation quality and are categorized into three levels of evidence: (1) effectiveness theoretically well established, (2) ∼ likely, (3) ∼ proven. The Green List Prevention is used in communities, at state and national levels, and research. This paper provides insight into its content, keywording and enhancements. Methods To characterize the evidence-based programs, an inductive-deductive procedure was used to form 14 super- and 33 subcategories with 226 characteristic attributes. Based on these, all registry entries were categorized and summarized descriptively. Results The 100 programs listed (4/2023) address not only the primary target group of children and adolescents, but also secondary target groups (mainly teachers n = 53, guardians n = 46, educators n = 19) and are located in different environments (mainly school n = 61, family n = 28, kindergarten n = 23). Behavioral prevention on violence including bullying n = 64, addiction n = 47 and mental health n = 34 are in the foreground; topics such as nutrition (n = 3) and physical activity (n = 2) are little represented. Social and life skills programs (n = 61) and training for guardians (n = 25) are listed particularly often. Conclusions The Green List Prevention provides an overview of effective prevention and health promotion interventions for different contexts. Its current expansion to rate environmental and behavioral prevention measures on nutrition and physical Key messages • The Green List Prevention enables stakeholders to make a targeted selection of evidence-based programs and offers practice-relevant information e.g. main focus, program formats, implementation. • The evidence register Green List Prevention supports evidence-based prevention and health promotion in Germany.