Nicole A. Vaughn

Using community-based participatory research to develop the PARTNERS youth violence prevention program.

Background: School-based violence prevention programs have shown promise for reducing aggression and increasing childrens prosocial behaviors. Prevention interventions within the context of urban after-school programs provide a unique opportunity for academic researchers and community stakeholders to collaborate in the creation of meaningful and sustainable violence prevention initiatives.Objectives: This paper describes the development of a collaborative between academic researchers and community leaders to design a youth violence prevention/leadership promotion program (PARTNERS Program) for urban adolescents. Employing a community-based participatory research (CBPR) model, this project addresses the needs of urban youth, their families, and their community.Methods: Multiple strategies were used to engage community members in the development and implementation of the PARTNERS Program. These included focus groups, pilot testing the program in an after-school venue, and conducting organizational assessments of after-school sites as potential locations for the intervention.Results: Community members and academic researchers successfully worked together in all stages of the project development. Community feedback helped the PARTNERS team redesign the proposed implementation and evaluation of the PARTNERS Program such that the revised study design allows for all sites to obtain the intervention over time and increases the possibility of building community capacity and sustainability of programs.Conclusion: Despite several challenges inherent to CBPR, the current study provides a number of lessons learned for the continued development of relationships and trust among researchers and community members, with particular attention to balancing the demand for systematic implementation of community-based interventions while being responsive to the immediate needs of the community.

The Impact of Nurse Case Management Home Visitation on Birth Outcomes in African-American Women

UNLABELLED The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Department of the Navy, Department of Defense or the U. S. government. Dr. Wells is a military service member (employee of the U.S. government). This work was prepared as a part of her official duties. Title 17, USC Section 101 defines a U.S. government work as a work prepared by a military service member or employee of the U.S. government as part of the persons official duties. Despite substantial reductions in U.S. infant mortality rates, racial disparities persist, with black Americans experiencing 2.4 times the rate of their white counterparts. Low birthweight and preterm delivery contribute to this disparity. METHODS To examine the association between antepartum nurse case management home visitation and the occurrence of low birthweight and preterm deliveries in African-American women in Montgomery County, MD, a retrospective cohort study was conducted using existing data from 109 mothers who were enrolled in the Black Babies Start More Infants Living Equally Healthy (SMILE) program. Logistic regression analysis was used. RESULTS Women who received antepartum home visits were 0.37 (CI 0.15-0.94) times less likely to experience preterm delivery than women who did not receive antepartum home visits. The effect of antepartum home visits on preterm delivery was independent of level of prenatal care, negative life events and number of prior live births. There was no significant association between antepartum home visits and low birthweight. CONCLUSION Antepartum home visits appeared to be protective against preterm delivery and could contribute to reducing racial disparities in infant mortality. Further study is needed to understand and replicate specific program components that may contribute to improved birth outcomes in African-American women.

Digital Animation as a Method to Disseminate Research Findings to the Community Using a Community-Based Participatory Approach

Community-based participatory research (CBPR) has garnered increasing interest over the previous two decades as researchers have tackled increasingly complex health problems. In academia, professional presentations and articles are major ways that research is disseminated. However, dissemination of research findings to the people and communities who participated in the research is many times forgotten. In addition, little scholarly literature is focused on creative dissemination of research findings to the community using CBPR methods. We seek to fill this gap in the literature by providing an exemplar of research dissemination and partnership strategies that were used to complete this project. In this paper, we present a novel approach to the dissemination of research findings to our targeted communities through digital animation. We also provide the foundational thinking and specific steps that were taken to select this specific dissemination product development and distribution strategy.

Social cognitions, distress, and leadership self-efficacy: associations with aggression for high-risk minority youth

Urban ethnic minority youth are often exposed to high levels of aggression and violence. As such, many aggression intervention programs that have been designed with suburban nonethnic minority youth have been used or slightly adapted in order to try and meet the needs of high-risk urban youth. The current study contributes to the literature base by examining how well a range of social-cognitive, emotional distress and victimization, and prosocial factors are related to youth aggression in a sample of urban youth. This study utilized data gathered from 109 9- to 15-year-old youth (36.7% male; 84.4% African American) and their parents or caregivers. A series of hierarchical multiple regressions were fit predicting youth aggression from social-cognitive variables, victimization and distress, and prosocial variables, controlling for youth gender and age. Each set of variables explained a significant and unique amount of the variance in youth aggressive behavior. The full model including all predictors accounted for 41% of the variance in aggression. Models suggest that youth with stronger beliefs supportive of violence, youth who experience more overt victimization, and youth who experience greater distress in overtly aggressive situations are likely to be more aggressive. In contrast, youth with higher self-esteem and youth who endorse greater leadership efficacy are likely to be less aggressive. Contrary to hypotheses, hostile attributional bias and knowledge of social information processing, experience of relational victimization, distress in relationally aggressive situations, and community engagement were not associated with aggression. Our study is one of the first to address these important questions for low-income, predominately ethnic minority urban youth, and it has clear implications for adapting aggression prevention programs to be culturally sensitive for urban African American youth.

Community–Academic Partnerships: Lessons Learned From Replicating a Salon-Based Health Education and Promotion Program

Background: We present a model of a community–academic partnership formed to replicate a unique salon-based health education and promotion program among African-American and Latino communities in Philadelphia. Objectives: The purpose of this article is to describe the partnership principles established and lessons learned in replicating the salon-based program that sought to develop a cadre of community–academic partners and build community-based organizations’ (CBOs) capacity to implement and evaluate the program. Methods: As the lead organization, the Arthur Ashe Institute for Urban Health (AAIUH), formed a partnership with two CBOs, three universities, and 17 salons. Guiding principles were established to manage the large collaborative and ensure success. Lessons Learned: By embracing a common mission and principles of understanding, co-learning, building capacity and sharing responsibility and recognition, this partnership was able to achieve positive outcomes. Challenges faced were related to replication, CBO infrastructure, data management capacity, and other process issues. Conclusions: Despite challenges, we created and sustained an enduring partnership and brought positive change to the community. Lessons learned highlight issues to examine before furthering this work such as fostering trust and building meaningful relationships.

Methods for linking community views to measureable outcomes in a youth violence prevention program.

Background: All parties in community–academic partnerships have a vested interest prevention program success. Markers of success that reflect community’s experiences of programmatic prevention success are not always measurable, but critically speak to community-defined needs. Objective: The purpose of this manuscript was to (1) describe our systematic process for linking locally relevant community views (community-defined indicators) to measurable outcomes in the context of a youth violence prevention program and (2) discuss lessons learned, next steps, and recommendations for others trying to replicate a similar process. Methods: A research team composed of both academic and community researchers conducted a systematic process of matching community-defined indicators of youth violence prevention programmatic success to standardized youth survey items being administered in the course of a program evaluation. The research team of three community partners and five academic partners considered 43 community-defined indicators and 208 items from the youth surveys being utilized within the context of a community-based aggression prevention program. At the end of the matching process, 92 youth survey items were identified and agreed upon as potential matches to 11 of the community-defined indicators. Conclusions: We applied rigorous action steps to match community-defined indicators to survey data collected in the youth violence prevention intervention. We learned important lessons that inform recommendations for others interested in such endeavors. The process used to derive and assess community-defined indicators of success emphasized the principles of community-based participatory research (CBPR) and use of existing and available data to reduce participant burden.

What does it take to sustain livable public housing communities

This special issue of Progress in Community Health Partnerships focuses on the health and well-being of the public housing residents, their neighborhoods, and the larger communities in which they are located. The importance of public housing to the health of our communities in the United States is substantial, given that 1.2 million American households reside in publicly supported housing, and many more people spend time in these settings as workers, visitors or neighbors as part of larger rural or urban communities 1 . Furthermore, in the broadest sense, creating and maintaining healthful public housing communities is in our collective self-interest. The public funding and policies for the provision of public housing, as well as the costs and benefits this housing brings to our larger communities, affect us all. This special issue grew out of the fourth HUD Livable Communities Conference, hosted by Drexel University School of Public Health in 2011. As the article by Confair et al describes 2 , our work in designing and conducting the conference and workshop brought together stakeholders from local and national government agencies, local non-profits involved in community health, academic researchers involved in urban health, and public housing community residents. At the end of the conference, we sought ways to continue the dialogue and share best thinking on the topic, and selected Progress in Community Health Partnerships as one mechanism for taking this discussion to a wider audience. We are grateful to both the Drexel School of Public Health and the Health Partners of Philadelphia for their financial support of this Special Issue. The Drexel School of Public Health, the only accredited school of public health in the Philadelphia region, was founded as “a school without walls”, focusing on partnerships within the City of Philadelphia and beyond, to address public health issues within a social justice framework. A true partner in health improvement efforts within the region, Health Partners of Philadelphia is a nonprofit managed care health plan committed to building healthy communities in southeastern Pennsylvania, and through its Foundation, working to fulfill unmet needs in disadvantaged communities of the Philadelphia region. The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) and the Region 3 Office of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) each contributed their invaluable Federal stakeholder perspective and expertise. Through our Call for Papers, we selected the nine diverse articles that comprise our Special Issue. They describe initiatives related to public housing, and urban communities more broadly, in seven different locations across the United States, including two from the New York and Boston areas, and one each from Oakland, Los Angeles, Seattle, the District of Columbia and Philadelphia. In complement to their broad geographic focus, the reports are equally broad in their foci, methodology, approach, and range of partnerships involved in the work, with authorship teams giving voice to public housing staff, community members, service providers from a range of organizations and academic partners. Two of the reports focus on the tasks involved in gathering health status information from community members. Council and colleagues at the District of Columbia Housing Authority 3 , working with academic collaborators, used a mailed survey as a tool to both collect data on community needs, but also to engage residents in monitoring community health issues, and participating in health planning. Bowen et al. 4 used surveys and key informant interviews to highlight the differences in perspectives on health issues between residents and resident leaders, highlighting the need to reach beyond a community’s natural leaders and spokespeople to capture the full scope of perspectives and needs.

Beyond the Manuscript: Podcast Interview Transcript

In each volume of the Journal, the editors select one article for our Beyond the Manuscript post-study interview with the authors. Beyond the Manuscript provides the authors the opportunity to tell listeners what they would want to know about the project beyond what went into the final manuscript. The associate editors who handled the articles conduct our Beyond the Manuscript interviews. This edition of Beyond the Manuscript features Becky Dennison, author of Organizing for Health Communities: A Report from Public Housing in Los Angeles, and Special Issue guest editor Nicole Vaughn.