Communities that Care: Building Community Engagement and Capacity to Prevent Youth Behavior Problems
Abigail A. Fagan, J. David Hawkins, David P. Farrington, and Richard F. Catalano
Abstract
Evidence-based, prevention-oriented, and community-driven approaches are advocated to improve public health and reduce youth behavior problems, but there are few effective models for doing so. This book advances knowledge about this topic by describing the conditions and actions necessary for effective community-based prevention. The chapters review the ways in which communities can promote readiness to engage in prevention among local stakeholders; build and maintain diverse, well-functioning prevention coalitions; conduct local needs and resource assessments; collectively decide on preventio ... More
Evidence-based, prevention-oriented, and community-driven approaches are advocated to improve public health and reduce youth behavior problems, but there are few effective models for doing so. This book advances knowledge about this topic by describing the conditions and actions necessary for effective community-based prevention. The chapters review the ways in which communities can promote readiness to engage in prevention among local stakeholders; build and maintain diverse, well-functioning prevention coalitions; conduct local needs and resource assessments; collectively decide on prevention priorities; select evidence-based interventions that are a good fit with prioritized community needs, resources, and context; and implement evidence-based interventions (EBIs) with fidelity and sustain them over time. The Communities That Care (CTC) prevention system is described in detail to illustrate effective community-based prevention. CTC is a coalition-based prevention system shown to promote healthy youth development and reduce youth behavior problems community wide. It does so by assisting communities to: (1) increase awareness of and support for EBIs; (2) encourage positive interactions between community residents and youth; (3) conduct local needs assessments and collectively decide on priorities to target with EBIs; (4) implement EBIs that are matched to prioritized needs; and (5) ensure that EBIs are coordinated across community organizations, implemented with fidelity, widely disseminated, and evaluated. The book describes the development and evaluation of the CTC system, including how its developers used community-based participatory research to ensure that CTC could be feasibly implemented and employed rigorous research methods to assess the degree to which use of the system reduced adolescent behavior problems.
Keywords:
coalition,
collective impact,
community-based prevention,
dissemination,
evidence-based intervention,
health promotion,
implementation
Bibliographic Information
Print publication date: 2018 |
Print ISBN-13: 9780190299217 |
Published to Oxford Scholarship Online: November 2018 |
DOI:10.1093/oso/9780190299217.001.0001 |
Authors
Affiliations are at time of print publication.
Abigail A. Fagan, author
Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Criminology & Law, University of Florida
J. David Hawkins, author
Endowed Professor of Prevention, University of Washington School of Social Work
David P. Farrington, author
Emeritus Professor of Psychological Criminology, Cambridge University
Richard F. Catalano, author
Bartley Dobb Professor for the Study and Prevention of Violence, School of Social Work, University of Washington
More
Less