Session: An Ecological Approach to Youth Violence Prevention: Combining Evidence-Based Programs into a Comprehensive Youth Violence Prevention Initiative for Adolescents in a Low-Income, Rural County (Society for Prevention Research 25th Annual Meeting)

Background: The risk and protective factors that impact youth violence span across an adolescents’ entire ecology. Individual (e.g., mental health), family (e.g., parent-child interactions), school (e.g., academic performance), and community (e.g., neighborhood crime) factors have a profound impact on rates of youth violence. In order to decrease adolescent violence, a multifaceted violence prevention initiative is necessary to enhance protective factors and mitigate risk factors at each ecological level. The Rural Adaptation Project (RAP) is a 5-year panel study of more than 6,000 youth that aimed to reduce rates of youth violence using three prevention programs that targeted each ecological level in youths lives: Positive Action (PA), Parenting Wisely (PW), and Teen Court (TC). The current symposium will provide an overview of the RAP study, with a discussion of implementation challenges and findings related to each of the prevention programs and lessons learned form a large-scale, multifaceted youth violence prevention initiative conducted in a racially/ethnically diverse, low-income, rural county. In addition, county level data were examined to assess if the RAP initiative impacted county rates of youth violence.

Methods: In Year 1 of the RAP study, data were collected from 4,321 youth in Grades 6 through 8. These youths were tracked longitudinally over four years as they moved through middle- and high-school and each year new incoming sixth graders were added to the sample. Thus, in Year 5, data were collected from over 6,000 adolescents in grades 6 through 12. The demographics of the RAP sample represent the diversity of the surrounding communities and about 30% of participants identify as White, 25% as African American, 24% as American Indian, 13% as mixed race, and 8% as Hispanic Latino. About half the sample were female and 68% received free/reduced price lunch. Data were collected using the School Success Profile Plus (SSP+) on online youth self-report that assesses perceptions about school, friends, family, neighborhood, self, health, and wellbeing.

Results/Discussion: Results of each of the prevention programs will be discussed and are detailed below. Overall, PA resulted in improvements in self-esteem and school hassles, participation in TC was associated with improvements in mental health, aggression, school experiences, and social relationships, and PW was associated with increased parenting abilities, and decreased parent-adolescent conflict. In terms of county findings, results reveal downward trends on several county level indicators such as delinquent complaints and juvenile arrests for aggravated assault. These results suggest that packaging prevention programs to provide comprehensive services for at-risk families is effective.