Strategic Planning Retreat Gets Media Coverage

Workshop Devoted To Reducing Teen Crime - "When it comes to finding ways to curb teen crime, the writing was on the wall."

NUPACE Strategic Planning Retreat - Background Documents

• Retreat Agenda
  
• One Page Summary Matrix of Nupace
  
• Baltimore City Gang Violence Reduction Plan
  
• Reengaging Disconnected Yout

NUPACE TIMELINE

Past Coalition Minutes

CDC SITE VISIT- Nov. 6-7, 2007: Agenda/Itinerary

Executive Summary: Our goal is to find a strategic way to reduce violence among youth 10-24 years of age in Nashville/Davidson County, TN using a community-based participatory research model approach. A common sentiment used throughout the site visit was that “youth violence is a community problem that needs a community solution.”  Hence, the formation of the Youth Violence Prevention Coalition and the idea of creating a Strategic Plan based on input from this coalition, which is made up primarily by the community this program intends to serves. The overall program has 8 goals and various objectives within each goal, but the mission will always be focused on reducing youth violence. We are being challenged to develop a national model for youth violence prevention by supporting community involvement in youth violence prevention research and strategic planning, and translating science into practice.

The activities will be implemented at multiple community levels, from youth engagement to partnering with the Mayor’s office and the Metro Department of Public Health. This will allow us to address the problem in a comprehensive and integrated way at all levels of the social ecology.  By developing partnerships at multiple levels, including at the neighborhood, school, county, and city levels, the Center will help coordinate and enhance this community’s commitment.  At the neighborhood level, we will bring together youth and youth-serving organizations to engage youth in prevention and social change, and to align efforts, services, and resources to more effectively address youth violence. For instance, we will engage high school students in identifying and mapping social and institutional strengths and challenges in their neighborhoods that they perceive as affecting youth violence. This activity will illuminate how community characteristics can impact rates of youth violence, and target areas where youth-serving organizations can devote resources. We will also be mapping and evaluating the resources, intervention approaches, and cooperative relationships of youth-serving organizations in the community. Over time, we hope that the work will allow show the need for funding youth-serving organizations to devote more staff and funds toward preventive activities, and utilize more strengths-based and empowerment approaches to address the underlying community conditions that contribute to youth violence. At the school level, we are partnering with students, teachers, administrators, and coordinated social service organizations to evaluate how a school-based bullying prevention program (compared to referral of students to existing community-based services) can improve students’ well-being and school climate in middle schools. At the city level, we have created partnerships with a broad range of groups including the Mayor’s office, Metro Dep. of Public Health, local hospitals, and health centers to develop a sustainable injury surveillance system that focuses on youth violence (and ultimately on unintentional injuries as well). Data information systems will be identified and merged so that the prevalence and nature of youth violence in Nashville can be understood in order to address how to reduce it.

These activities will be conducted with input from the coalition that will help enhance the relevance, impact, and sustainability of NUPACE. The community that is impacted by the vary problem we are trying to address can be the best resource for helping us with a reality check.  The challenge while conducting our various research projects will be to find a sustainable solution for reducing youth violence in Davidson County and find ways to translate our research into funding and resource allocation for the community that has to go back to their reality and do “business as usual”. The hope is that our research will identify gaps in services, challenge the system to do something about it, and by its very nature give our community organizations the funding they need to help reduce youth violence. NUPACE has a unique opportunity to illustrate how addressing youth violence through engaging community partnerships can enact change. Our community organizations are clearly invested in increasing the health and safety of its youth, because they are very aware of the unfortunate experience of increasing rates of youth violence in Nashville.  In 2005, Nashville experienced an increase in homicides over 70%, with 41 homicides among youth. This increase was the largest found in any of the top 30 metropolitan areas of the country. The overall injury homicide death rate in Nashville during this same year was almost four times the 2003 national average.  Nationally, homicide is the 2nd leading cause of death among 15-24-year-olds (CDC, 2006), and the 1st leading cause of death for African American youth. Among individuals known to have committed homicide in 2000, 48% were age 24 or younger.

School-Based Intervention to Prevent Bullying and Improve School Climate

Dr. Moury Nation & Alignment Nashville’s 5-8 Committee

Study Rationale: Much of the bullying intervention research has not evaluated effects on school climate, and only involved students and teachers.

This study is designed to build upon previous research and address these limitations by:

• Engaging all social service personnel in the school, in addition to teachers and students, in a common violence prevention goal.
• Coordinating youth violence prevention efforts among service providers with a common goal of promoting child wellbeing and a “culture of kindness”.
• Promoting collaboration and synergy among school personnel and community agencies that address violence prevention.

Study Design:

• 12 Middle Schools in Metropolitan Nashville Public School (MNPS) District
• 4 receive an Alignment Enhanced Services intervention.
• 4 receive the Olweus Bullying Prevention Program
• 4 receive treatment as usual (i.e., no special treatment control group)

AES Intervention

• Bullying-related staff development with teachers and school staff
• Bullying-related training for non-profit services providers
• Coordinated/collaborative support services provided by alignment partners and other non-profit service providers.
• Technical assist for teachers & administrators in handling bullying and violence-related issues.
• Referrals for students who need more intensive services.
• Presentations to parents and liaison to parents on issues related to youth violence and bullying.

Where are we now?

• Completed job description and are hiring coordinators.
• Compiling a list of agencies s
• erving each of the schools
• Completed Institution Review
• Planning the process of introducing coordinators to schools and principals
• Developing a protocol for the AES intervention
• Analyzing data from pilot year

Issues:

• Intervention Development
• Including BPP in the AES conditions?
• Process measurement One measure for all conditions?
• Separating effects

Measurement:

• changing/developing the measure
• participation in cross-site research
• Youth Involvement
• Coordinating with youth involvement committee
• Other ways to enlist youth participation
• Emerging Opportunities
• Impact of violence in public housing
• Gangs: coordinating with the youth involvement committee to engage gangs in youth violence prevention
• Cross-cultural research looking a school & community youth violence in the US and South Afric

Center for Community Studies
Peabody College of Vanderbilt University
http://peabody.vanderbilt.edu/ccs 

• Is a research, dissemination, outreach & capacity-building group of professionals dedicated to strengthening human community.  The Center is multidisciplinary, comprised of psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, & other social scientists with decades of experience in community development, community organizing, & community building. 
• The scope of the Center’s work is international as well as domestic & its special strengths are its capacity (1) to generate primary data where community & relational dynamics are poorly understood or limited to secondary information & (2) to collaborate with the users of data in its planning, collection, & application.  Our commitments include contracts with public agencies, the private sector, & civil society groups, especially local community organizations that can use systematic & diagnostic research & project design & assessment activities to advance the wellbeing of their members, those they serve, & other stakeholders beyond the community.  The Center also sponsors a weekly colloquium series for discussion of ground-breaking research & ideas from within & outside the Center.
• The Center is directed by Dr. Douglas D. Perkins & affiliated with the Community Action-Research Centers network of the Society for Community Research & Action & maintains connections with other research centers & groups around the world, particularly in studying issues related to the development & use of organized power in community [see http://www.people.vanderbilt.edu/~douglas.d.perkins/network_proposal.htm.
• Plans for the Center were announced & further developed at the Interdisciplinary Community Research Working Conference, cosponsored by Vanderbilt University, SCRA, & the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, & held May 21-23, 2004, at Peabody College.

CCS Work Groups

The Center currently includes the following topical work groups, each of which includes multiple faculty & graduate student collaborators & many of which involve service-learning course projects with Vanderbilt undergraduates:

• The Organizational Change Work Group includes action-research projects on changing paradigms in human service organizations & a study of volunteer-oriented, nonprofit community organizations as learning organizations. (Coordinator: Kimberly Bess)
• The Healthy Communities Work Group includes evaluations of health policies, mental health & substance abuse services, & prevention programs (Coordinators: Paul Juarez (Meharry Medical School), Michael Pullmann, Sarah Van Hooser).
• The Schools & Community Work Group studies school-based interventions & partnerships, especially in low-income communities (Coordinators: Maury Nation, Carolyn Hughes).
• The Urban Neighborhoods Work Group includes studies of grassroots community organizing in cities across the U.S.; urban policy analyses on housing, homelessness, neighborhood revitalization, urban growth, & downtown & neighborhood planning; the development of urban neighborhood indicators; & systematic assessments of neighborhood social, economic, & environmental needs & assets. (Coordinators: Paul Speer, Doug Perkins)
• The International Communities Work Group includes an ongoing collaborative community development “field school” in Equador & projects with immigrant communities in the United States. (Coordinator: Bill Partridge)
• The Religion, Spirituality & Community Work Group includes studies of faith communities, psychological sense of community, & the relationship between religion, war & other major social conflicts & changes. (Coordinator: Paul Dokecki)