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As U.S. service members deploy for extended periods on a repeated basis, their ability to cope with the stress of deployment may be challenged. Many programs are available to encourage and support psychological resilience among service members and families. However, little is known about these programs' effectiveness. This report reviews resilience literature and programs to identify evidence-informed factors for promoting resilience.

As U.S. service members deploy for extended periods on a repeated basis, their ability to cope with the stress of deployment may be challenged. A growing number of programs and strategies provided by the military and civilian sectors are available to encourage and support psychological resilience to stress for service members and families. Though previous research from the field of psychology delineating the factors that foster psychological resilience is available, there has been no assessment of whether and how well the current military resilience programs are addressing these factors in their activities. Further, little is known about the effectiveness of these programs on developing resilience. To assist the Department of Defense in understanding methodologies that could be useful in promoting resilience among service members and their families, the research team conducted a focused literature review to identify evidence-informed factors for promoting psychological resilience. The team also reviewed a subset of military resilience programs to determine the extent to which they included those evidence-informed factors. This article describes the context, approach, and findings from these research activities.

Objective: With internal validity being a central goal of designed experiments, we seek to elucidate how community partnered participatory research (CPPR) impacts the internal validity of public health compara­tive-effectiveness research.Methods: Community Partners in Care (CPIC), a study comparing a community-coalition intervention to direct technical as­sistance for disseminating depression care to vulnerable populations, is used to illustrate design choices developed with attention to core CPPR principles. The study-design process is reviewed retrospectively and evaluated based on the resulting covariate balance across intervention arms and on broader peer-review assessments. Contribu­tions of the CPIC Council and the study's design committee are highlighted.Results: CPPR principles contributed to building consensus around the use of randomization, creating a sampling frame, specifying geographic boundaries delimit­ing the scope of the investigation, grouping similar programs into pairs or other small blocks of units, collaboratively choosing random-number-generator seeds to deter­mine randomized intervention assignments, and addressing logistical constraints in field operations. Study protocols yielded samples that were well-balanced on background characteristics across intervention arms. CPIC has been recognized for scientific merit, has drawn attention from policy­makers, and has fueled ongoing research collaborations.Conclusions: Creative and collaborative fulfillment of CPPR principles reinforced the internal validity of CPIC, strengthening the study's scientific rigor by engaging comple­mentary areas of knowledge and expertise among members of the investigative team.Ethn Dis. 2018;28(Suppl 2):357-364; doi:10.18865/ed.28.S2.357.