Session: Implementing the Communities That Care (CTC) Prevention System in High-Risk, Urban Communities By the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Youth Violence Prevention Centers (Society for Prevention Research 26th Annual Meeting)

The goal of this symposium session is to present a series of papers which provide information on adaptations, research evidence, and lessons learned from implementing the Communities That Care (CTC) prevention system in high-risk, urban communities. CTC provides a promising method for engaging and organizing the community, using data to identify community needs, matching these needs with evidence-based programs, and ensuring programs are implemented with fidelity and that outcomes are tracked over time. Several funded National Centers of Excellence in Youth Violence Prevention (YVPCs) are currently working with their communities to implement CTC. During this process, important implications for the implementation of the different CTC stages have emerged, including how to build and develop research-practice-policy partnerships and how to use research evidence to inform program and policy decisions.

This symposium assembles YVPC researchers from the University of Chicago, University of Colorado, Boulder and the Virginia Commonwealth University to talk about the different needs in their communities, what adaptations in the CTC process they have needed to make, and what implementation looks like in their communities. The YVPC researchers will share research evidence that informs various stages of the CTC process. Finally, the YVPC researchers will share success stories and lessons learned while engaging their communities in the CTC approach. One distinct aspect of these presentations is that all three YVPCs are implementing and rigorously evaluating CTC in urban neighborhoods. Thus far only one urban community has implemented and rigorously evaluated CTC (i.e., Denver via the Denver Youth Violence Prevention Center). Though the CTC process demonstrated positive impacts on youth behaviors, attitudes, and norms in other settings, the needs of urban neighborhoods are unique and the process requires additional adaptation and tailoring in the context of urban neighborhoods (e.g., increased density, higher rates of poverty, increased levels of crime, etc.).

The first paper in this symposium, “Using Partnerships and Research Evidence to Develop a Community Action Plan and Launch Violence Prevention Programming” will present research evidence that informed a collectively written Community Action Plan to launch violence prevention programming in a community in Chicago, IL. The second paper in the symposium, “Using Communities That Care to Set Priorities and Select Community-level Prevention Strategies in High-Risk Denver Communities” will describe survey data that was used to select community priorities and prevention strategies matched to the needs of two communities in Denver. Finally, the third paper, “Enhancing Research-Policy-Practice Decisions in Urban Inner-City Communities: An Adaptation of the Communities that Care Model” will present findings from surveillance data and key informant interviews that are being used to inform the CTC prevention system in Richmond, VA. Findings from these three presentations will be discussed, summarizing the importance of using research evidence and partnerships to inform the implementation of the CTC prevention system in high-risk urban communities.