The 131st Annual Meeting (November 15-19, 2003) of APHA

Abstract #70615

Vincent Chen, PhD, Division of Epidemiology, University of Minnesota, 1300 S. Second Street, Suite 300, Minneapolis, MN 55454, 612-6254567, chen_v@epi.umn.edu

Direct-action community organizing has been increasingly employed in public health interventions. These programs aim to change environmental risk/protective factors (attitudes, norms, policies, regulations, etc) via broad community support and mobilization. However, it is unclear if the social support and social norms will sustain over time after the research-project-sponsored community organizing effort has ended. The Tobacco Policy Option for Prevention project (TPOP) was successful in changing community policies in areas such as age-of-sale law enforcement and merchant practice in selling tobacco using the community organizing approach. This paper examined the question of longevity in community building, attitudes, and social norms about tobacco regulation in the TPOP communities. Surveys were conducted on major stakeholders such as public health leaders, community members, and law enforcement agencies in the intervention and comparison communities about their attitudes on youth tobacco access restriction, overall community support on tobacco issues, and opinion about smoke-free environment. Analyses were conducted based on an integrated matrix approach and insignificant differences were found consistently between intervention and comparison communities. These results suggest the community organizing effort did not sustain community capacity and social norms just two years after the intervention. The dissipation can be attributed partly to the intervention strategy employed in the TPOP project and many other studies. Its goal was only to change local tobacco control ordinances and policies via community mobilization. TPOP had no intention to make programmatic changes. However, establishment of a continuing community organization would most likely maintain the community support and norms for further tobacco control.

Learning Objectives:

• To describe direct-action community organizing and its application in youth risk behavior intervention.
• To understand integrated matrix analysis and its use in exploring relationship between various community stakeholders and their tobacco control attitudes, perceptions, and support.
• To explain the strength and weakness of using direct-action community organizing in youth smoking prevention and its implication on sustaining community support and social norms.

Keywords: Tobacco Control, Community Programs

Presenting author's disclosure statement:
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.