Community Coalition Strategy and Capacity: Toward a Coalition Typology

Introduction. Community coalitions have become an increasingly important part of public health promotion. The Drug-Free Communities grant program administered by the Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) has been the largest single program supporting community coalitions to reduce substance abuse. The current evaluators of the DFC program have revised and are currently implementing a process monitoring tool, the Coalition Classification Tool (CCT), that asks coalitionsto report on the structure, procedure, and strategies that characterize their coalition. While coalitions have been an object of extensive research, there is not a clear understanding of the various ways in which community coalitions are organized and carry out their work. The objective of this analysis is to profile major structural, procedural, and target community characteristics of coalitions in different community contexts, and ultimately, to develop a typology of coalitions.

Method. The CCT is designed to solicit information on (a) the structure of coalitions [e.g., membership, staffing], (b) procedures [e.g., meetings, leadership], (c) major outcome objectives and target populations, and (d) coalition culture [e.g., inclusiveness, decision style]. The study method will profile the full sample of communities (n=343) on several characteristics. First, coalitions will be characterized by the community sectors that are most active as participants on coalitions(e.g., schools, law enforcement, social services). Second, coalitions will be characterized by their degree of formal organization (e.g., paid versus volunteer workers, membership in a larger organization, budget size). Third, coalitions will be characterized according to their primary target communities (e.g., ethnic or racial focus, size of community,). Finally, we will characterize coalitions according to their major intervention strategies (e.g., environmental strategies, school based programs). Analysis will focus on profiling coalitions on these characteristics, identifying the degree to which different characteristics are associated, and identifying the degree to which characteristics of coalitions differ by context.

Conclusions: This analysis will provide an empirically based profile of the characteristics of community coalitions across different community contexts. The analysis will identify whether there are identifiable different types of coalitions (e.g., mixes of active members and strategies), and whether the characteristics of coalitions vary by community context. These findings will be important for (a) providing new information on the degree to which coalitions develop distinct organizational and procedural styles, and (b) determining whether these identifiable styles vary by community context.