A community-centered collective efficacy intervention for prevention of community violence

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Violence impacts the life trajectories of far too many adolescents, with the highest incidence of violence exposure concentrated among youth in urban settings. In response to RFA-CE-22-013, Rigorous Evaluation of Commu- nity-Centered Approaches for the Prevention of Community Violence (U01), this study will evaluate, via a cluster- randomized controlled trial, the effectiveness of a novel community-centered intervention that promotes thriving and resiliency to reduce community violence (CATEGORY 2). Using a community-partnered approach, we will implement a Community Resiliency Collective Efficacy Intervention (CRCEI) to engage community members in dialogue on thriving, community leadership, and organizing for social change. Facilitating discussion and con- sensus organizing within neighborhoods about child and youth thriving is expected to increase individual and neighborhood levels of collective efficacy and reduce community violence. The proposal emerges from a SAM- HSA-funded community resiliency project in Pittsburgh (H79SM084931) that supports implementation of this novel community-centered approach. This study will provide the first rigorous evaluation of this innovative pre- vention approach. The project is set in urban, racially-segregated neighborhoods with concentrated disad- vantage in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We hypothesize that opportunities to co-create thriving environments for children and youth will provide a concrete, action-focused strategy for increasing resiliency in neighborhoods most impacted by community violence and reducing community rates of violence. The proposed project will engage diverse community members and collaborators in urban neighborhoods with high levels of community violence to first participate in six guided discussions about ‘child thriving’ followed by an invitation to participate in a 6-month-long collective efficacy intervention that promotes neighborhood-level transformation and a com- munity-based project. Comparison neighborhoods will receive health education sessions as a control interven- tion. A cluster-randomized controlled design (20 neighborhoods; 30 participants/neighborhood) will be used to assess effectiveness of CRCEI on neighborhood-level collective efficacy and rates of community violence (Aim 1), and individual-level collective efficacy and violence exposure (Aim 2). Implementation facilitators and barriers across individual and neighborhood level will be assessed, including tracking fidelity to intervention and costs associated with program implementation (Aim 3). Innovations of this project include implementing in trustworthy settings such as churches and libraries identified by community members using asset mapping, training facilita- tors from focus neighborhoods to build capacity and sustainability, and integrating community members into collaborative team science. This will be the first rigorous evaluation of a community-designed, community-cen- tered collective efficacy intervention intended to impact individual and neighborhood levels of collective efficacy, protective factors that are expected to reduce multiple forms of violence.