Into the Real-World Implementation: Delivering interventions in real-world settings to promote the well-being of children and families.

We have not inherited this land from our ancestors; rather we have borrowed it from our children. (Kenyan Proverb).

Society thrives when it invests in the well-being of children and families. In rearing our children directly as parents or collectively as a society, we inhabit a territory that borrows their future. The investment in interventions in natural settings that foster children’s development and families’ well-being becomes an investment from precious borrowed capital. Lifelong well-being is a vision to be brought to reality through the efforts of all those engaged in children’s development and education. In this symposium, researchers will present their findings on interventions implemented in real-world settings to promote the well-being of children and families. Which interventions have been implemented in real-world settings? How have they contributed to increasing the well-being of children and families? What are the facilitators and barriers when implementing such interventions in real-world dynamics? All children should have the support and opportunities they need to reach their full potential, and caregivers and educators should have the necessary resources to foster such development. Real-world implementation is fundamental to making effective interventions widely available and consequently improving the lives of children and their families. However, several studies have highlighted the gap between our knowledge of effective interventions and what children and families receive in practice. The transferability of these interventions from research into real-world settings is complex and scarcely understood. A variety of interrelated barriers and facilitators to implementing interventions in the real world have been recognized, including the attitudes of providers, the characteristics of the target populations, organizational factors, and resource availability. Despite the extensive evidence of the efficacy of interventions to promote the well-being of children and families, there have been numerous calls for more applied research to better understand how those interventions are delivered in the real-world environments of schools, clinics, communities, and other contexts. With this symposium, we expect to promote the scientific debate based on evidence from the real world, disseminating research that fills knowledge gaps and contributes to fostering and sustaining improvements in the lives of children and families that will make a meaningful difference and transform society today and tomorrow.