256955 Role of Collaboration in Facilitating Policy Change in Youth Violence Prevention: A Review of the Literature

Monday, October 29, 2012

Jeanelle Sugimoto-Matsuda, MS , Department of Psychiatry, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, HI
Kathryn L. Braun, DrPH , Public Health Sciences, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI
Youth violence remains a serious public health issue nationally and internationally. The social ecological model has been recommended as a framework to design youth violence prevention initiatives, requiring interventions at the micro-, meso-, exo-, and macro-levels. However, documentation of interventions at the macro-level, particularly those that address policy issues, is limited. This study examines a recommendation in the literature that formalized collaborations play a vital role in stimulating macro-level policy change. The purpose of this systematic literature review is to examine existing youth violence prevention collaborations and evaluate their policy-related outcomes. The search found 23 unique collaborations focused on youth violence prevention. These were organized into three groups based on the collaborations' “catalyst” for action – internal (momentum began within the community), external (sparked by an external agency), or policy (mandated by law). Findings suggest that internally catalyzed collaborations were most successful at changing laws to address youth violence, while both internally and externally catalyzed collaborations successfully attained policy change at the organizational level. A conceptual model is proposed, describing a potential pathway for achieving macro-level change via collaboration. Recommendations for future research and practice are suggested, including expansion of this study to capture additional collaborations, investigation of macro-level changes with a primary prevention focus, and improvement of evaluation, dissemination, and translation of macro-level initiatives.

Learning Areas:
Planning of health education strategies, interventions, and programs
Public health or related laws, regulations, standards, or guidelines
Public health or related organizational policy, standards, or other guidelines
Public health or related public policy
Social and behavioral sciences

Learning Objectives:
1) To describe the role of policy in the social ecological approach to prevent youth violence. 2) To compare youth violence prevention collaborations based on motivating factors for group initiation. 3) To examine a conceptual framework which describes the process of policy change through collaboration.

Keywords: Youth Violence, Collaboration

Presenting author's disclosure statement:

Qualified on the content I am responsible for because: I have been an investigator in youth violence prevention research for over five years, with a specialization in public policy.
Any relevant financial relationships? No

I agree to comply with the American Public Health Association Conflict of Interest and Commercial Support Guidelines, and to disclose to the participants any off-label or experimental uses of a commercial product or service discussed in my presentation.