Moving beyond implications for a general research agenda, findings from this specific study can provide an opportunity to begin a discussion about the implications of genetic research for the prevention of externalizing psychopathology in particular and, more generally, for program development and policy in the genomic era. With respect to efforts to prevent externalizing psychopathology, our findings indicate that (1) common genetic variation may predispose some children to developing externalizing psychopathology; but that (2) this predisposition is susceptible to preventative intervention. In other words, there is a group of children that is both highly likely to develop externalizing psychopathology and also highly likely to benefit from preventative intervention—and it may be possible to identify them. These observations lend support to intervention strategies that target high-risk children (in contrast to those that are delivered to the entire population), but they raise questions about how that targeting should be conducted. Specifically, they raise the possibility that genetic information could help to identify those children most likely to benefit from intervention. This is of particular interest in the case of long running, costly interventions with high-risk populations, such as Fast Track.
