BOCYF Projects: Dissemination and Communications

Dissemination and communications are central to the work of the Board on Children, Youth, and Families and its Forum on Adolescence, particularly to its efforts to bridge the worlds of science, policy, and practice. The Board aims to reach audiences beyond the traditional recipients of National Academies reports by targeting mailings and briefing invitation lists to reach state and local as well as federal officials, parents as well as policy makers, and youth as well as practitioners, and by translating materials into Spanish and other languages, and making them increasingly accessible electronically. In all this work, the goal is to inform these audiences about important research on children, youth, and families so that they may use the latest scientific information in their work.

The Board has a number of different strategies it pursues in disseminating its work, and has plans to launch additional strategies. These include:

Reaching new audiences, such as practitioners, parents, and adolescents
Conducting needs assessments to learn about the ways in which members of traditional and new audiences receive information
Announcements of new projects through mailings or the Board's newly redesigned web page
Publication lists summarizing thematically related reports
Congressional briefings and meetings with key federal agencies
Mailing of reports, executive summaries, summary materials, and announcements of new reports
Translations of summary materials from reports
Publication of information about reports in journals, newsletters, trade publications, and on the internet
Working with the Office of News and Public Information of the National Academies to alert the media to the release of reports, write and publish op-ed articles in newspapers, and create video news releases to disseminate via satellite to broadcasters nationwide
Regional Journalists' Seminars