Youth violence exacts a high toll in local communities. Effective violence prevention programs can improve community safety, but only when implemented well. This can be challenging given the advanced capacity needed to implement high quality prevention, resulting in a large gap between the positive outcomes often achieved by prevention science and the lack of these outcomes at the local level. In response to Funding Opportunity' 05012's Research Objective #1, this project will assess the effects of community participation in a capacity building model, called Getting To Outcomes (GTO), in implementing an effective violence prevention program in schools. The proposed study will test whether using GTO leads to better implementation of an evidence-based violence prevention program--Too Good for Drugs and Violence (TGFDV) --and as a result, decreased violent behavior in the schools. The investigators will examine this hypothesis using a quasi-experimental design. Six high schools in Santa Barbara County will be using TGFDV during six semesters over the three-year period. Three high schools will be assigned to the intervention group (i.e., receive the capacity building tool, GTO) and three in the same county will serve as comparison sites (TGFDV only). The intervention will consist of delivery of the GTO manual, an annual training in GTO, and bi-weekly technical assistance to violence prevention school staff delivering the TGFDV curriculum. Standardized assessments of GTO use and TGFDV implementation will be administered each semester across the life of the proposed project. The investigators will assess school violence behaviors and perceptions at the intervention and comparison sites prior to TGFDV and GTO implementation and up to two years later using school records on disciplinary actions and a bi-annual cohort survey of 9th and 11th graders. They will also measure the financial costs associated with implementing GTO over and above TGFDV. This project seeks to narrow the gap between prevention science and practice by empirically testing a tool to build capacity to implement evidence-based violence prevention in the community. As such, the proposed project is consistent with the cross-cutting and youth violence research priorities developed by National Center for Injury Prevention and Control (NCIPC, 2002), which also emphasized capacity issues. ? ? ?
| Chinman, Matthew; Hunter, Sarah B; Ebener, Patricia (2012) Employing continuous quality improvement in community-based substance abuse programs. Int J Health Care Qual Assur 25:604-17 |
| Hunter, Sarah B; Chinman, Matthew; Ebener, Patricia et al. (2009) Technical assistance as a prevention capacity-building tool: a demonstration using the getting to outcomes framework. Health Educ Behav 36:810-28 |
