Session: Empirical Measurement of Coalition Functioning and Effectiveness: Implementation Science for Community Wide Substance Abuse Prevention Efforts (Society for Prevention Research 21st Annual Meeting)

Coalitions remain popular and important vehicles to prevent a variety of community problems, including substance abuse, youth violence, obesity and health disparities. Our understanding of the role coalitions play in prevention is growing and there is expanding evidence that under the right conditions, coalitions can have an impact on changing community systems, norms and risk and protective factors so that reductions in targeted community problems are achieved. What is also growing is our sophistication in defining and measuring the critical conditions needed in order for coalitions to be effective at prevention. Previous studies on coalition functioning have pointed to a variety of potential elements of coalition effectiveness, including leadership, decision-making and planning processes. The papers presented in this session build upon the existing coalition functioning literature and hone in on key factors to help shape our understanding of the fluid and complex nature of coalition processes, functions and roles.

The first paper, “Community Coalition Strategy and Capacity: Toward a Coalition Typology,” provides a profile of 692 coalitions that are current grantees of the Drug-Free Communities Support Program. Coalitions will be profiled in terms of membership activity, degree of formal organization, target community characteristics, and major intervention strategies. This analysis will provide an empirically based profile of coalition functions across different community contexts.

The second presentation compares the functioning of youth and adult led prevention coalitions. Youth have a uniquely powerful advocacy voice and an insider understanding of youth behavior that can strengthen prevention efforts. However, youth also have less experience and skill in managing collaborative efforts, thus putting youth coalitions at risk of poor functioning. This presentation examines the similarities and differences between youth and adult coalition functioning using a standardized coalition functioning assessment.

The third presentation examines coalition functioning from a community problem solving perspective. Researchers developed a coalition survey measuring a comprehensive approach to coalition functioning, which includes both internal and external elements of coalition work. The key elements of the community problem solving model are described and measurement development and application in a large-scale cross-sectional study (n=551) and a smaller longitudinal study (n=94) to measure growth in coalition functioning overtime will be discussed.